The watchmaker

[Subduction Zone]

Obviously our opinions differ.

I can see how you are so easily confused since there is no evidence for the creation myth at all.

 

[nPeace]

Please, once again you are not being honest. Your error was explained to you. You would not take the honorable way out. Until you do there is no point in trying to help you.

Are you bullying me? It seems that way. Bye

 

[Subduction Zone]

Are you bullying me? It seems that way. Bye

Hardly. I am trying to keep the discussion on track. You keep trying to make detours. How is keeping one's opponent honest "bullying"?

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

I'm going to need you to take a look at your first question to me:

Explain how we have evidence of objects that occur naturally

And then juxtapose that with this specific part of your follow-up to the rest of what I responded with:

They conclude that someone was responsible for the beauty, the order, the purpose, etc, since they know from experience than it requires intelligence for particular things.

Here you are, trying desperately to negate that we have experience with things that "occur naturally", and then just move right on in using your own assertions that we "know from experience" that particular things "require intelligence." Once again, making my point. How do we know from experience that particular things require intelligence? BECAUSE WE CAN CONTRAST THEM TO THOSE THINGS THAT WE DO NOT SEE AS REQUIRING INTELLIGENCE. From experience we understand what it means to create something, and how those things differ from the un-created - the stuff that was here before the creation - the materials that went into the creation for example. But we know for a fact that no human hand created the atoms of the basic elements that went into the creation itself. But that is exactly where our EXPERIENCE on the matter ends. You can't just go inserting a creator of things wherever you please. For one, you most certainly run into an infinite regression if you are to remain at all logical and rational in thought. Because the creator of one level of complexity has its own level of complexity to consider, and therefore (by your logic) we should posit that it also needs a creator. To arbitrarily suppose a cut-off - or a point at which no further "creator" is necessary and that the level you choose for it to stop was simply "not created" or "always was" is, quite frankly, ridiculous. You can't know that at all. Not even with any amount of certainty.

I mean seriously... just think about it for a second... you ask me to "explain how we have evidence of objects that occur naturally" and yet you have the audacity to turn around and tell me that you have evidence for a creator because A BOOK TOLD YOU SO?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Can you give one reason why the beginning would require a creator?

What do you mean by “the beginning?”

I’m trying to apply the argument you have consistently.

You said “that objects far more complex would also require a builder - one more advanced in understanding.” A watchmaker is far more complex than a watch, so wouldn’t God need a creator as well?

I mean, to extend the analogy further, the existence of the watch implies the existence of all sorts of precision machines and tools used to make the watch, right? We don’t look at a watch and say “the watch must have been created in one action by the magic spell of a very powerful wizard;” we would say that the existence of the watch implies the existence of mills, stamping presses, fixtures, etc.

Here’s an example of one watch manufacturer describing all of the processes that go into making their watches:

The existence of their watches points to the existence of many other machines - e.g. 3D printers that can print with metal, precision measurement tools, special custom fixtures and jigs, etc., all of which were designed themselves.

... and even in the case where we don’t know the specifics of how a particular watch was made, it would be foolish to assume that its manufacturing process involved nothing else that was designed.

Do you understand what I’m getting at? If you’re going to argue that a watch requires a designer, it’s disingenuous for you to argue that a whole watchmaking factory doesn’t require an even more talented designer.

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

Huh? ...and how may I ask, did you arrive at that?

Observation of the natural world.


How nature does things

How we do things in comparison

Ah. Nature. What makes it nature?

It is what is there. Even manufactured things are technically nature so long as the constituent parts were natural.

There is no such thing as supernatural.

I interested. How does nature work?

Things happen because of the constituent parts and their properties. A sphere doesn't drop through the spherical hole by design. It drops because a sphere CAN.

Naturally exist? No science has shown that. No scientist can even recreate it.

If we, supposedly the highest life form on the planet, can't do it, then it is probably not designed. After all, God, at least as characterized in the bible, is rather incompetent to the point that even many humans with a decent IQ could do better.

I agree. Thankfully scientists admit it, and say their theories could be wrong.. like... tomorrow.

And religions have often been proven to be inaccurate ... like ... millennia ago.

If you can't even show anyone the LUCA, or how it started, why would you ask someone to show you the creator of the universe.

You say you know He did it. Now show us how you came to that knowledge. And please don't say scriptures, because the authors knew less than just about everyone around them. King Solomon, wisest of the wisest, had to outsource architects from foreign lands to build a brick rectangle with fancy decorations. Does that sound right to you?

Why not? I know of some that do. So no - you have a wrong opinion.

You know carpenters who made the wood? You know potters who made the clay or dirt? You know metalworkers that made the metal?

Did you just say 'God can't'?

LOL, Yes. Yes I did. God says He can do anything and yet if that were true, the bible would be a few paragraphs at most because nearly the entire drama revolves around God not being able to do anything any smart author would've written.

God: Eve! I can't believe you not only misremembered the rule I gave you, but you disobeyed Me anyway!
Eve: Uh, I wasn't even created yet when You gave out that rule. Only idiots just assume knowledge is going to spread. That's why teachers have to be invented.

So you believe in God? ... How do you know what God can and cannot do?

God of the bible is a literary character and can be analyzed as such. Clearly, God of the bible doesn't know what He's doing. This can be chalked up to bad writing if you don't want to think the real God is actually that way.

Before the mountains were brought forth,
Or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world,
Even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

Psalms was attributed to a child who looked after sheep, IIRC. The only education I ever see him get is what a prince looks like naked.

If God is the beginning, as the Bible describes him, then he has no creator.

But He does. He is an offspring by marriage or blood of El, who Himself is an offspring of Earth and Sky. The bible forgets to delete all the polytheistic parts.

In any event, the first cause is just that - The first cause - the beginning.

But history can be circular, which makes "beginning" and "end" irrelevant.

So life forms via DNA, but life formed before DNA.

Life doesn't require DNA. rNA will work just as well.

They know that the Adam and Eve story paints God as being incompetent and unjust if read literally.

Exactly. Whatever a real God may be capable of, the biblical character "God" is really, REALLY dense.

That you are refusing to discuss the evidence that life creates itself?

Life isn't magic. Either the constituent parts' properties allow for it or they don't. The bible brags that God can make a man out of dirt and restore skeletons to life, but John the Baptist is still headless. All resurrection stories in the bible involve people with nebulous and vague causes of death. Bury Jesus in 6 feet of dirt instead of an air-filled tomb with easy access and see just how fast he comes back to life. Funny how stabbed people, beheaded people, eaten people, etc don't get to come back, isn't it? It suggests all resurrection stories, at least those in the bible (as other mythologies DO have divine or human or whatever characters pieced back together ... better hospitals, maybe?), involve poorly understood medical conditions and they probably buried a LOT of actually living people.

 

[Ponder This]

I do disagree with it, actually. You can actually go into plenty of stores and buy fake rocks that have been designed. The really well-designed ones are indistinguishable at first glance from natural rocks.

Inferring design - or lack of design - is a lot more difficult than Paley would have us believe.


So God is absent... or at least apparently absent?

Your example appears to agree with Paley's assertion that you cannot easily infer lack of design from apparent lack of design. In what way do you disagree?

 

[Ponder This]

But that's part of the problem... "different levels of design?" It is all, supposedly designed, right? What about the apparent absence of tree makers? What about the apparent absence of stone makers? What about the apparent absence of air makers? Why is the watch the object chosen? This fact says volumes about the honesty of the analogy itself.

Besides this, the entire analogy is a strawman argument. You put up the strawman of the "uncreated watch" - and then easily disprove that because humans having experience with watches understand that you can't have a watch form without a creator. Then you posit "the universe" as even more complex than a watch and therefore conclude that you have also disproved the "uncreated universe" - but you haven't. All you did was put up a strawman and knock it down, hailing yourself as the victor. It is failure at its finest.

A straw man is an intentionally misrepresented proposition set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent's real argument.
An analogy is a comparison between two things, typically for the purpose of explanation or clarification.

This is why the watch is chosen and also why your argument that the analogy is a straw man is ill-founded. Moreover, the analogy does not prove the universe was created. Conclusions based on analogical reasoning do not follow as a matter of logical necessity.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

This is why the watch is chosen and also why your argument that the analogy is a straw man is ill-founded. Moreover, the analogy does not prove the universe was created.

Thank you. This is simply perfect, and I hope a lot of your fellow believers read this. You're absolutely correct - the watchmaker analogy IS NOT argument material in any way, shape or form. Though even you have to admit that this is how it is used, time and time again.

I am honestly curious... when the analogy IS used as an argument, and IS used to attempt to prove the created aspect of the universe, what would you call this fallacious use of the analogy form?

 

[Milton Platt]

How do you know that everything around was not designed? Where is that evidence to be found?

There is no evidence that anything ever builds itself. Therefore, the evidence we currently have, would lead us to infer that everything required a builder. The cause for their existence.

I do not know that it was not designed, I also do not know that it was. Neither does anyone else.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

Then the flower must have been designed. How else do you explain the complex, purposeful function of the watch... and the flower?

Why can they not be sufficiently explained by nature?

The point is that the reason the analogy uses a watch rather than a flower - which you describe as also having complex, purposeful function - is because we know watches are designed while we know that flowers occur in nature without necessarily having inherent design. You don't identify design by checking for complexity, you identify design by contrasting with nature, so the analogy is fundamentally flawed to begin with. Hence, the watchmaker's fallacy.

It's like you walk through a desert, and you find a well built, and furnished house - all wood. After a mile walking, you find a pile of logs, branches, twigs. We don't reason that that explains how the house got there. It's the same material, but it does not explain the stucture of the house.

But the material is - paradoxically - immaterial. The reason we know houses are built is because we have seen houses being built and we know of no natural phenomenon that produces houses.

To use your example, imagine you have never seen a house before and have no idea of what a house is made from. How can you deduce that the house you found was specifically designed, rather than simply arose naturally as a result of nature and/or physical laws?

Walking a distance further and finding a forest - of trees... of course, doesn't address the question either.

But the trees are far more complicated than the house, so why aren't they used in the analogy? And what if you found a tree from which houses were growing? Wouldn't that falsify your earlier assumption of design?

You still need to explain the seed that the tree (and flower) grew from. The complex process involved in the seed existing in the first place.
Interestingly, the processes required for the seed being able to produce the tree, the growth of the tree, etc., are more complex than the simple house. Yet, it took someone to build the house.
Is it reasonable to conclude that the most complex seed required no one to build it?

Why not? Your logic here is essentially flawed. You're arguing that because design produced y, it is necessary for design to produce x, but that's clearly fallacious.

It seems more reasonable that someone was responsible for building the more complex things.

How?

Hence, the Bible's simple statement is reasonable
Hebrews 3:4
For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything.

Except there's no actual reasoning behind it.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Your example appears to agree with Paley's assertion that you cannot easily infer lack of design from apparent lack of design. In what way do you disagree?

Did you read my post? I just gave an example of an object that was designed but has an apparent lack of design (a decorative fake rock).

Paley seems to assume that inferring design (or the lack of it) is straightforward, but when we actually get into it, we quickly see that it isn’t.

What criteria would you use to determine whether or not something is designed?

 

[SkepticThinker]

Can you test the supernatural with the scientific method?

Note. You are asking Christian's what evidence they have for God, not what evidence does science have for God. Or am I mistaken?

If I am mistaken, then obviously you are mistaken to think that all evidence must be put in a box marked scientific method.

I have been through this numerous times, and you still insist on a failed argument on what you consider to be a way to test God

Please
Evidence defined.

How do you know the supernatural even exists at all?

 

[nPeace]

I'm going to need you to take a look at your first question to me:


And then juxtapose that with this specific part of your follow-up to the rest of what I responded with:

Here you are, trying desperately to negate that we have experience with things that "occur naturally", and then just move right on in using your own assertions that we "know from experience" that particular things "require intelligence." Once again, making my point. How do we know from experience that particular things require intelligence? BECAUSE WE CAN CONTRAST THEM TO THOSE THINGS THAT WE DO NOT SEE AS REQUIRING INTELLIGENCE. From experience we understand what it means to create something, and how those things differ from the un-created - the stuff that was here before the creation - the materials that went into the creation for example. But we know for a fact that no human hand created the atoms of the basic elements that went into the creation itself. But that is exactly where our EXPERIENCE on the matter ends. You can't just go inserting a creator of things wherever you please. For one, you most certainly run into an infinite regression if you are to remain at all logical and rational in thought. Because the creator of one level of complexity has its own level of complexity to consider, and therefore (by your logic) we should posit that it also needs a creator. To arbitrarily suppose a cut-off - or a point at which no further "creator" is necessary and that the level you choose for it to stop was simply "not created" or "always was" is, quite frankly, ridiculous. You can't know that at all. Not even with any amount of certainty.

I mean seriously... just think about it for a second... you ask me to "explain how we have evidence of objects that occur naturally" and yet you have the audacity to turn around and tell me that you have evidence for a creator because A BOOK TOLD YOU SO?

I don't think you addressed this

Explain how we have evidence of objects that occur naturally

It would be nice if you at least made an attempt.

Particular things, from our knowledge and experience, do require intelligence. Laws, information, purpose...
We don't know otherwise.
If you know, please say how.

un-created ?
What is un-created, and how do you determine that something is un-created?

The reason scientists are speculating that life may have been seeded by intelligent life forms, is because they are aware of the facts I mentioned. They themselves know that they can't just throw stuff in a container, and hope for the best. Careful thought must go int what they do. Intelligence is needed.

I did not say that I have evidence for a creator because a book told me so.
Did you honestly missed that?

 

[nPeace]

What do you mean by “the beginning?”

I’m trying to apply the argument you have consistently.

You said “that objects far more complex would also require a builder - one more advanced in understanding.” A watchmaker is far more complex than a watch, so wouldn’t God need a creator as well?

I mean, to extend the analogy further, the existence of the watch implies the existence of all sorts of precision machines and tools used to make the watch, right? We don’t look at a watch and say “the watch must have been created in one action by the magic spell of a very powerful wizard;” we would say that the existence of the watch implies the existence of mills, stamping presses, fixtures, etc.

Here’s an example of one watch manufacturer describing all of the processes that go into making their watches:

The existence of their watches points to the existence of many other machines - e.g. 3D printers that can print with metal, precision measurement tools, special custom fixtures and jigs, etc., all of which were designed themselves.

... and even in the case where we don’t know the specifics of how a particular watch was made, it would be foolish to assume that its manufacturing process involved nothing else that was designed.

Do you understand what I’m getting at? If you’re going to argue that a watch requires a designer, it’s disingenuous for you to argue that a whole watchmaking factory doesn’t require an even more talented designer.

Question
1. What is an object?
2. Why must the designer be an object?

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

Explain how we have evidence of objects that occur naturally
I don't think you addressed this
It would be nice if you at least made an attempt.

No problem. Fundamentally, we have evidence of objects that occur naturally through use of our senses to detect and interact with them. A bit more abstractedly, we (humans) find ourselves in a unique position on the Earth in that we find ourselves both capable and interested in observing the world around us to come to conclusions of the why's and wherefore's regarding how the Earth and its living and non-living members function. And so, through this observation, we can come to conclusions about what it is that we consider "alive" and those things we consider "not alive", and within that framework, we can also come to conclusions about items that are "created" by something alive (for example, a seashell), and items that are, decidedly, "not created" because they have no creative/living/driving force behind their formation (for example quartz crystals). Anything that is not alive, and yet assumes some form without a living/creative hand in play is obviously something I would consider an object that occurs naturally. And on top of this, I would also consider living processes that are not under the creative/intellectual/imaginative control as also occurring naturally. This would include everything that happens in the process of reproduction after the moment of fertilization, the body's creation of natural fluids (oils, saliva, blood), the tying of bodily systems to one another via growth... and a whole host of other processes that occur FOR us without our having to voluntarily take any creative action to push the processes along. And as to how we have evidence of those things... well... if you are a human, how can you NOT have evidence for those things?

Particular things, from our knowledge and experience, do require intelligence. Laws, information, purpose...
We don't know otherwise.
If you know, please say how..

If I know what? If I know how something like "laws" don't require intelligence? I never said they didn't. Laws most certainly require an intelligence to think them up, and then further intelligence to go about the business of enforcing them. So what? There is no such thing as laws without an intelligence to think on them and try to wrangle the idea.

"Information" on the other hand, is too broad a topic to constrain to having a requirement of "intelligence." I would agree it requires an intelligence of some form to decipher or interpret information, but IN NO WAY is an intelligence required for information to present itself to an agent who can do that interpreting. That's just an asinine thing to believe, honestly. It takes only a single example to blow that out of the water. Take a mote of dust, for example. Using measurement devices, and having intelligence to decipher their output, there is a HUGE amount of information to be gleaned from that single dust particle. What is it composed of? How does it react to heat or light? What is its weight/mass? NONE of those things needed to be attributed to the particle of dust by an intelligence... and yet it is all INFORMATION about the dust particle, awaiting an intelligent agent to examine and interpret it.

un-created ?
What is un-created, and how do you determine that something is un-created?

Anything that doesn't appear to require an intelligent/creative force to have caused a discernible formation. I'll refer back to the example of crystals. They form from inanimate matter - no life force, no hand guiding the formation - the elements involved simply do their thing, adhering to the underlying processes of the universe. No creative force necessary. Un-created.

The reason scientists are speculating that life may have been seeded by intelligent life forms, is because they are aware of the facts I mentioned. They themselves know that they can't just throw stuff in a container, and hope for the best. Careful thought must go int what they do. Intelligence is needed.

No matter how you slice it, it all must go back to some BASE form of reality though. Even God himself would have to have some explanation for His existence. In positioning that life on Earth was seeded from another planet you have DONE NOTHING AT ALL to explain how life arises in the first place. You still have to ask "where did the aliens who seeded Earth get the living material?" Just as, assumning God created the universe, you MUST ask yourself "what created God?"

In the scenario where we posit that the material of the universe has simply always been in some form or another, and that life (being particular arrangements of the matter of the universe infused with self-renewable energy) is an imminent result of the right materials, circumstances and amounts of time coming together - then ALL of those issues simply disappear. You no longer have to wonder where the life on Earth came from. You no longer have to wonder where the matter of the universe came from. The question itself doesn't even make sense under those conditions.

I did not say that I have evidence for a creator because a book told me so.
Did you honestly missed that?

Well, you should probably adopt the whole "book" idea then... 'cause I would say that that "evidence" is at the very least more tangible and presentable than the notion that you instead simply tell people: "just look around you." That argument is going to get you nowhere fast.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Question
1. What is an object?

A thing.

2. Why must the designer be an object?

Well, it's either a thing or not a thing (i.e. nothing).

 

[nPeace]

Observation of the natural world.


How nature does things

How we do things in comparison

How do you know what's designed from what isn't?
http://www.lovethesepics.com/2012/07/paradise-in-the-devils-garden-plitvice-waterfalls/
https://www.homestratosphere.com/garden-waterfalls/

It is what is there. Even manufactured things are technically nature so long as the constituent parts were natural.

There is no such thing as supernatural.

So what is there is nature?
You and I both know that is not true.
We don't know everything that is there,because we have not traversed the entire universe and beyond, nor have we seen everything, nor do we know everything. So I can ignore the last statement.

Things happen because of the constituent parts and their properties. A sphere doesn't drop through the spherical hole by design. It drops because a sphere CAN.

Huh? Why is there a sphere, and a spherical hole?

If we, supposedly the highest life form on the planet, can't do it, then it is probably not designed. After all, God, at least as characterized in the bible, is rather incompetent to the point that even many humans with a decent IQ could do better.

Thanks for using the word probably. That argument is weak though.
The highest life form on the planet - at least those who are honest - admit they know very little... about practically everything. Jesus has a message for the ones who imagine they know anything about his father, himself, or his father's written word.

This is why I speak to them this way. They see, but they’re blind. They hear, but they don’t listen. They don’t even try to understand.

Matthew 13:13

And religions have often been proven to be inaccurate ... like ... millennia ago.

Why do you feel it necessary to compare religion? Is there somehow a competition?
I don't see what religion has to do with scientists being wrong.
Religion has nothing to do with what can be trusted to be true.

You say you know He did it. Now show us how you came to that knowledge. And please don't say scriptures, because the authors knew less than just about everyone around them. King Solomon, wisest of the wisest, had to outsource architects from foreign lands to build a brick rectangle with fancy decorations. Does that sound right to you?

Where did I say I know God did it?
I believe, and I know, are two entirely different things.
I believe the universe and life was created by an intelligence. I believe the Bible is authored by that intelligence - It identifies as God almighty. That's what I believe, and the evidence around me seems to harmonize with that.

You know carpenters who made the wood? You know potters who made the clay or dirt? You know metalworkers that made the metal?


LOL, Yes. Yes I did. God says He can do anything and yet if that were true, the bible would be a few paragraphs at most because nearly the entire drama revolves around God not being able to do anything any smart author would've written.

God: Eve! I can't believe you not only misremembered the rule I gave you, but you disobeyed Me anyway!
Eve: Uh, I wasn't even created yet when You gave out that rule. Only idiots just assume knowledge is going to spread. That's why teachers have to be invented.


God of the bible is a literary character and can be analyzed as such. Clearly, God of the bible doesn't know what He's doing. This can be chalked up to bad writing if you don't want to think the real God is actually that way.


Psalms was attributed to a child who looked after sheep, IIRC. The only education I ever see him get is what a prince looks like naked.


But He does. He is an offspring by marriage or blood of El, who Himself is an offspring of Earth and Sky. The bible forgets to delete all the polytheistic parts.

But history can be circular, which makes "beginning" and "end" irrelevant.

Matthew 13:1-23

Life doesn't require DNA. rNA will work just as well.

You sound just like those who didn't know what the uses were for certain DNA, and labeled it junk, until they discovered they had a use. Let's see you get life to work without DNA.

Exactly. Whatever a real God may be capable of, the biblical character "God" is really, REALLY dense.


Life isn't magic. Either the constituent parts' properties allow for it or they don't. The bible brags that God can make a man out of dirt and restore skeletons to life, but John the Baptist is still headless. All resurrection stories in the bible involve people with nebulous and vague causes of death. Bury Jesus in 6 feet of dirt instead of an air-filled tomb with easy access and see just how fast he comes back to life. Funny how stabbed people, beheaded people, eaten people, etc don't get to come back, isn't it? It suggests all resurrection stories, at least those in the bible (as other mythologies DO have divine or human or whatever characters pieced back together ... better hospitals, maybe?), involve poorly understood medical conditions and they probably buried a LOT of actually living people.

At least we agree on something. Life isn't magic.

 

[nPeace]

I do not know that it was not designed, I also do not know that it was. Neither does anyone else.

Thank you.

Why can they not be sufficiently explained by nature?

The point is that the reason the analogy uses a watch rather than a flower - which you describe as also having complex, purposeful function - is because we know watches are designed while we know that flowers occur in nature without necessarily having inherent design. You don't identify design by checking for complexity, you identify design by contrasting with nature, so the analogy is fundamentally flawed to begin with. Hence, the watchmaker's fallacy.


But the material is - paradoxically - immaterial. The reason we know houses are built is because we have seen houses being built and we know of no natural phenomenon that produces houses.

To use your example, imagine you have never seen a house before and have no idea of what a house is made from. How can you deduce that the house you found was specifically designed, rather than simply arose naturally as a result of nature and/or physical laws?


But the trees are far more complicated than the house, so why aren't they used in the analogy? And what if you found a tree from which houses were growing? Wouldn't that falsify your earlier assumption of design?


Why not? Your logic here is essentially flawed. You're arguing that because design produced y, it is necessary for design to produce x, but that's clearly fallacious.


How?


Except there's no actual reasoning behind it.

How do you know that

flowers occur in nature without necessarily having inherent design.

unless you assume.


If I had

never seen a house before and have no idea of what a house is made from.

I could still come to the correct conclusion that the house was built, by the knowledge I have of other things - like a matchbox, a cardboard box, etc.
The fact is, my experience is all I need to use my senses and come to a reasonable, and logical conclusion. If there is no verifiable evidence to show otherwise, then I have good reason to accept what the evidence suggests.

I think I am being quite reasonable, hence why you guys are having such difficulty producing a reasonable counter argument.

How do you know the supernatural even exists at all?

Never said I did. If I did, please point out the post. Thanks

 

[nPeace]

No problem. Fundamentally, we have evidence of objects that occur naturally through use of our senses to detect and interact with them. A bit more abstractedly, we (humans) find ourselves in a unique position on the Earth in that we find ourselves both capable and interested in observing the world around us to come to conclusions of the why's and wherefore's regarding how the Earth and its living and non-living members function. And so, through this observation, we can come to conclusions about what it is that we consider "alive" and those things we consider "not alive", and within that framework, we can also come to conclusions about items that are "created" by something alive (for example, a seashell), and items that are, decidedly, "not created" because they have no creative/living/driving force behind their formation (for example quartz crystals). Anything that is not alive, and yet assumes some form without a living/creative hand in play is obviously something I would consider an object that occurs naturally. And on top of this, I would also consider living processes that are not under the creative/intellectual/imaginative control as also occurring naturally. This would include everything that happens in the process of reproduction after the moment of fertilization, the body's creation of natural fluids (oils, saliva, blood), the tying of bodily systems to one another via growth... and a whole host of other processes that occur FOR us without our having to voluntarily take any creative action to push the processes along. And as to how we have evidence of those things... well... if you are a human, how can you NOT have evidence for those things?


If I know what? If I know how something like "laws" don't require intelligence? I never said they didn't. Laws most certainly require an intelligence to think them up, and then further intelligence to go about the business of enforcing them. So what? There is no such thing as laws without an intelligence to think on them and try to wrangle the idea.

"Information" on the other hand, is too broad a topic to constrain to having a requirement of "intelligence." I would agree it requires an intelligence of some form to decipher or interpret information, but IN NO WAY is an intelligence required for information to present itself to an agent who can do that interpreting. That's just an asinine thing to believe, honestly. It takes only a single example to blow that out of the water. Take a mote of dust, for example. Using measurement devices, and having intelligence to decipher their output, there is a HUGE amount of information to be gleaned from that single dust particle. What is it composed of? How does it react to heat or light? What is its weight/mass? NONE of those things needed to be attributed to the particle of dust by an intelligence... and yet it is all INFORMATION about the dust particle, awaiting an intelligent agent to examine and interpret it.


Anything that doesn't appear to require an intelligent/creative force to have caused a discernible formation. I'll refer back to the example of crystals. They form from inanimate matter - no life force, no hand guiding the formation - the elements involved simply do their thing, adhering to the underlying processes of the universe. No creative force necessary. Un-created.


No matter how you slice it, it all must go back to some BASE form of reality though. Even God himself would have to have some explanation for His existence. In positioning that life on Earth was seeded from another planet you have DONE NOTHING AT ALL to explain how life arises in the first place. You still have to ask "where did the aliens who seeded Earth get the living material?" Just as, assumning God created the universe, you MUST ask yourself "what created God?"

In the scenario where we posit that the material of the universe has simply always been in some form or another, and that life (being particular arrangements of the matter of the universe infused with self-renewable energy) is an imminent result of the right materials, circumstances and amounts of time coming together - then ALL of those issues simply disappear. You no longer have to wonder where the life on Earth came from. You no longer have to wonder where the matter of the universe came from. The question itself doesn't even make sense under those conditions.


Well, you should probably adopt the whole "book" idea then... 'cause I would say that that "evidence" is at the very least more tangible and presentable than the notion that you instead simply tell people: "just look around you." That argument is going to get you nowhere fast.

Here is how an automatic Mechanical Watch works.

It was designed to work day after day - not by someone pushing a button, but by the energy stored within it.
We did not see the designer, nor did we see him/her/it assemble the parts and set it in motion.

This fact does not mean that the "natural" processes occurring were not the product of design.
The "natural" things around us, could all simply be following natural processes put in place by their designer.
This makes logical sense to me.

So

the universe has simply always been in some form or another, and that life (being particular arrangements of the matter of the universe infused with self-renewable energy) is an imminent result of the right materials, circumstances and amounts of time coming together...

Without a cause, matter took form, and ignited. Uh huh.