What is your best evidence for a god?

[nPeace]

What "goal"?


I'm not claiming any goals at all. I have no clue why you think that I am.


You keep claiming that. Are you going to support it, or are you just going to keep claiming it?

Claim? Support what? That the neurons, and synapses have a particular goal.
I'll ignore that, since you can't be serious... and I don't think it's not that you are not paying attention.

Bare claims aren't evidence of anything. Except perhaps gullibility.

I already told you: patterns and processes that emerge from the laws of nature working on matter.

You have not explained anything.
Can you give an example?

Yes. The brain is a pattern of matter and this pattern triggers chemical processes.

Yes. The existing brain with all its components in place, does.

Adapation = evolution.

Columbus.

Reproduce, mutate, survive, repeat.
I already told you how we know that brain building is regulated by genetics, how brains size is regulated by genetics, how variation of brain size is regulated by genetic mutation, how we have plenty of examples of extant species that have extremely simple rudimentary brains all the way upto species with large complex brains, how we know from the fossil record that brains of the human lineage have gradually grown bigger over the past couple million years.

You did mention the assumptions you have, yes.
Inference and presuppositions are what you accuse us of making. So why do you feel you are in a better position to use them?

We also know that natural processes can and do result in natural design all the time.
You being ignorant (or too stubborn to learn) about that, doesn't change that fact.

Never said it was.

Bare claim again.

Not an assumption.

View attachment 44344

Not an assumption.

Factually, throughout the animal kingdom, we have examples of very small and simple rudimentary brains all the way up to the large complex human brain and plenty of examples in between.

Kind of strange that you would call that an "assumption".
The alternative to this factoid would be to claim that all animals have a brain of the same size and complexity. Clearly that is not the case.

It is written in your books. You must infer, and presume. You cannot directly observe this, and make verifiable conclusions.
Progress in the study of brain evolution: from speculative theories to testable hypotheses
Darwin's theory of evolution raised the question of how the human brain differs from that of other animals and how it is the same. Early students of brain evolution had constructed rather grand but speculative theories which stated that brains evolved in a linear manner, from fish to man and from simple to complex. These speculations were soundly refuted, however, as contemporary comparative neurobiologists used powerful new techniques and methodologies to discover that complex brains have evolved several times independently among vertebrates (e.g., within teleost fishes and birds) and that brain complexity has actually decreased in the lineages leading to modern salamanders and lungfishes. Moreover, the old idea that brains evolved by the sequential addition of new components has now been replaced by the working hypothesis that brains generally evolve by the divergent modification of preexisting parts. Speculative theories have thus been replaced by testable hypotheses, and current efforts in the field are aimed at making phylogenetic hypotheses even more testable. Particularly promising new directions for comparative neurobiology include (1) the integration of comparative neuroanatomy with comparative embryology and developmental genetics in order to test phylogenetic hypotheses at a mechanistic level, (2) research into how evolutionary changes in the structure of neural circuits are related to evolutionary changes in circuit function and animal behavior, and (3) the analysis of independently evolved similarities to discover general rules about how brains may or may not change during the course of evolution.

Is that article too old?
In search of a unifying theory of complex brain evolution
How does evolution produce a complex brain? What are the factors that contribute to aspects of cortical expansion and organization in different mammals? How did human brains become so large and complex, and are they fundamentally different than the brains of other mammals? While these questions are inherently interesting, generating theories about brain evolution is a tricky business because one must strike a balance between known experimental data from extant mammals and inferences that can be made from these data regarding the unknown form of ancestral brains. For this reason, studies of brain evolution have not been at the forefront of neuroscience research until quite recently. Without question, it can be more rewarding to directly record from a neuron and characterize its response properties, or identify cells on a microscope than to assemble data from diverse disciplines to weave a cohesive story about a process that has been occurring for over 4 billion years.

Yes. You have ideas, but they are just that... ideas.
Why are there so many explanations for primate brain evolution?
The question as to why primates have evolved unusually large brains has received much attention, with many alternative proposals all supported by evidence. We review the main hypotheses, the assumptions they make and the evidence for and against them. Taking as our starting point the fact that every hypothesis has sound empirical evidence to support it, we argue that the hypotheses are best interpreted in terms of a framework of evolutionary causes (selection factors), consequences (evolutionary windows of opportunity) and constraints (usually physiological limitations requiring resolution if large brains are to evolve). Explanations for brain evolution in birds and mammals generally, and primates in particular, have to be seen against the backdrop of the challenges involved with the evolution of coordinated, cohesive, bonded social groups that require novel social behaviours for their resolution, together with the specialized cognition and neural substrates that underpin this.

If you wish to call embryology "unscientific".

A study? Who is talking about a study?
Methods are use in science fields of study. They are not unscientific... but the assumptions and conclusions reached based on these assumption are... as there are some things you cannot verify conclusively.
I already linked to papers showing that comparative anatomy, or genetics are based on interpretations which are not foregone conclusions.

High school biology.

I wasn't talking about brain evolution. I was talking about the buildup / growth of the brain during embryonic development. In the beginning of pregnancy, the "child" doesn't have a brain or braincells. And then a couple months later, it does. Are you not aware of this?

A child. I know of no child that does not have brain cells, unless something went horribly wrong.

The fact that mutations can make brain sizes vary, is what matters.
Not all mutations are going to have the same ripple effects. What it proves, is that brain size not only can be, but IS, regulated/determined by genetics.

Genes play a role in growth in the body. I fail to see what that has to do with the fact that assumptions prove nothing.

Picking on those mutations that also have harmful side-effects, doesn't change that fact.

Also not that most mutations, even beneficial ones, oftenly come with a cost. It's usually a tradeoff if the benefit outweighs the cost.

For example....
Consider a mutation that increases bone density by loading it up with more calcium.
Suppose this happens in a species that benefits from it.
That calcium needs to come from somewhere...
So, either it needs to alter its diet so that it takes up more calcium. Or the calcium is to be taken from elsewhere in the body, meaning that there is less calcium available now for other stuff.
In case of the latter, the benefit of stronger bones must outweigh the loss of calcium in those other systems.

Having said that... ever wondered why wisdom teeth hurt like hell and why most people need to have them pulled out? I'll tell you: because our mouth is too small for all our teeth. We used to have bigger mouth, with enough room for all those teeth. But our brain exploded in size. Today, our cranium takes up more room. And analogous to the calcium in the above example, that room needs to be taken from somewhere: our mouth. A bigger head isn't an option as that would give problems for childbirth.

So today, due to a brain that trippled in size in only a couple million years, we have a mouth that is too small to house all our teeth.

See, how all that stuff neatly comes together to form a bigger picture? That's what they call "explanatory power".

Now you can try and explain how an "intelligent designer" apparently was so dumb that he gave us a set of teeth with a mouth to small to fit all of them.

Or you can let go of this iron age superstition and read up on modern 21st century biology.
It's your choice off course.

This seems quite off topic.

Don't confuse the "how" with the "if".

Determining that a structure evolved is not the same as finding out the exact evolutionary path that was taken to end up with said structure.

As an analogy... let's go to Lenski's E.Coli experiment.

12 populations, non of which are able to metabolize citrate. Physically impossible to do so.
After x generations, 1 population has a population explosion. Turns out, they are feeding on citrate and that novel food source means an abundance of food, leading to a larger population size that can be sustained.

Nobody went into that population to fiddle around with the genes to create this metabolic pathway.
So, they KNEW the feature evolved. But they didn't know HOW yet.

They then went back to previous generations (they kept samples in a freezer so that they could trace it back if such things happened). And by doing so, they were able to identify exactly which mutations were responsible for it.

So there you go.....
Determining that a structure evolved without knowing how it evolved - perfectly possible.

What are we talking about again?
Is the OP about evidence for God's existence? Should you be talking about evolution, or how life came to be?

 

[nPeace]

Because there is no evidence that a designer exists. A circuit board is a cride analogy only but does not represent the circuitry in the brain, which also relies on chemical signals from other parts of the body and from sensory inputs..
You must demonstrate that the designer actually exists first. We know a circuit board is designed because we have evidence of who designed it. We have no such evidence of a god.

My use of the circuit board was to show how we know it's a designed object. I think that's the point being missed.
If that point is appreciated, then one can appreciate that the designed object is what gives evidence of a designer.
Thus it demonstrates that the designer does exist.

Is the brain a designed object? How would we know the brain is a designed object? if it is a designed object, it gives evidence of a designer, thus demonstrating a designer exists.

 

[Heyo]

Can you show that “there is enough time” for evolution

I have an open invitation to teach anyone who wants to know why evolutionary biology is the best (and only) explanation of diversity.
If @Hockeycowboy or you want to take me up on the offer:

Why the Theory of Evolution is True. Part 1: What is Science?

 

[ratiocinator]

But in a broad sence, there are only 2 possibilities, ether God exists or he doesn’t……….. So under what bases do you say that the second is more probable than the first?

On the basis I said. If your going to guess at why the universe exists then you have to take all the possible guesses and compare it with the number that contain the conclusion you're arguing for.

Even if we take the universe to be designed, that still doesn't mean that anything like a monotheistic god did it. Which leads me to another point, if it was designed for life (which is the implication) the it's a bizarre way to do it. Why is almost all of it inhospitable to life? Why make something you have to wait billions of years for it to produce a tiny environment on a tiny speck? If the universe actually was like the ancients thought, with the earth at the centre and being the most important object, then you'd have much more of a case.

Well name one alternative and explain why is it better than God

*Shrug* at random, I rather like conformal cycling cosmology. Neatly explains the entropy 'problem' and it's rather an eccentric approach (which sort of appeals to me). It's still just a guess, but is is based on what we know and it makes a few tentative predictions.

Or is it another case of “I am an atheist, therefore I don’t have to support any of my assertions”

It more a case that it's you who are proposing a solution to a problem, so it's up to you to justify that solution, not up to other people to give you alternatives.

Because we know that the universe has some properties that make it contingent (requires an explanation) God doesn’t have these properties or at worst “we don’t know” because we haven’t seen God……… so it´s not special pleading, I am asserting that the universe requires an explanation because the universe has some properties (it´s FT, it had a beginning, etc.) that God doesn’t have (or may not have)

As I said before, we don't know if the universe could have been different and we don't know if it's all there is, so fine tuning is dubious at best (it's just an unknown). As for having a beginning, that's just Newtonian thinking. General relativity tells us that time is internal to the universe and what we have is a space-time manifold, which didn't (as a whole) have a beginning.

Again you just putting your god into a gap - something we don't understand (yet) - then arbitrarily deciding that it doesn't need explaining.

But you are ignoring the most important thing, not having an explanation for the explanation is not a good reason to reject the explanation……………you don’t need to know “where did the Egyptians came from” in order to conclude that they build the pyramids.

But you really haven't provided a reason to think that a god (let alone your specific god) is a good explanation that should be taken seriously, rather than just a guess you'd rather like to be true for other reasons.

 

[ratiocinator]

“No Context”? Do you expect there would be another example, w/ different parameters to compare?

I don't know, do you?

We don't have a theory of everything, so we don't know that they could have been different and we don't know if our pocket of expanding space-time is all there is or whether it's part of some sort of multiverse (as is suggested by some of the current hypotheses).

Many physicists have come to this conclusion of fine-tuning...we don’t need context.

Fine tuning is a problem in the sense that we just don't know why the constants are what they are and that if they were different we wouldn't have a universe like we do. It's an unknown, a gap, and saying goddidit is just a god of the gaps argument. What's more it just moves the problem because the god has to be "fine tuned" to want to create this sort of universe, otherwise we wouldn't exist in that case, either.

If the constants had been different we wouldn't exist, so that needs explaining, so you make up a god that made it so, but if the god had been different, and not wanted to make this universe, then we wouldn't exist, but somehow that doesn't need explaining? It's magic!

 

[viole]

No the total energy is not zero, what the literature says is that maybe the energy from matter and the energy from gravity is balanced.

While this is an very interesting and intriguing possibility, it´s irrelevant and doesn’t solve the problem.

So ether energy came from somewhere (the first law of thermodynamics is wrong)

Or energy is eternal ( second law is wrong)

Or the there is something supernatural that can violate the laws

Well, no. If the sum is really zero, then you do not need to explain any net energy coming from somewhere.

and that is much more than an intriguing possibility, since it relates to the large scale curvature of space, which appears to be also zero.

On top of that, and even more seriously for your case, the first principle speaks of energy being constant in time. At least on average. Ergo, it is is not applicable when not even time “existed”. You are basically saying: there was zero energy before and, boom, a lot of energy afterwards. Ergo, the first principle is violated because the energy did not remain constant. The problem here is obvious: there was no before, and therefore the principle is not applicable.

The same of course for the second, which definitely need a macroscopic contest, in order to be applicable, since it assumes an asymmetric arrow of time.

ergo, they both require an already existing universe, with an already defined spacetime, and even a macroscopic thermodynamic context in order to polarize the direction of time, to make sense. And it is therefore a logical fallacy to use them to defeat a naturalistic origin of the universe, if any.

ciao

- viole

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

And if the Gods are to interact with us, why would it not be through our minds, the most sensitive and delicate sensing organ we have?

So sensitive, that it is extremely prone to delusion and hallucination.

 

[leroy]

I have an open invitation to teach anyone who wants to know why evolutionary biology is the best (and only) explanation of diversity.
If @Hockeycowboy or you want to take me up on the offer:

Why the Theory of Evolution is True. Part 1: What is Science?

I have an open invitation to teach anyone who wants to know why evolutionary biology is the best (and only) explanation of diversity.
If @Hockeycowboy or you want to take me up on the offer:

Why the Theory of Evolution is True. Part 1: What is Science?

My view is that evolution almost certainly occurred, (we share a common ancestor with other species) but we don’t know which mechanisms where responsible. Any disagreement from your part?

 

[leroy]

On the basis I said. If your going to guess at why the universe exists then you have to take all the possible guesses and compare it with the number that contain the conclusion you're arguing for.

Even if we take the universe to be designed, that still doesn't mean that anything like a monotheistic god did it. Which leads me to another point, if it was designed for life (which is the implication) the it's a bizarre way to do it. Why is almost all of it inhospitable to life? Why make something you have to wait billions of years for it to produce a tiny environment on a tiny speck? If the universe actually was like the ancients thought, with the earth at the centre and being the most important object, then you'd have much more of a case.



*Shrug* at random, I rather like conformal cycling cosmology. Neatly explains the entropy 'problem' and it's rather an eccentric approach (which sort of appeals to me). It's still just a guess, but is is based on what we know and it makes a few tentative predictions.



It more a case that it's you who are proposing a solution to a problem, so it's up to you to justify that solution, not up to other people to give you alternatives.



As I said before, we don't know if the universe could have been different and we don't know if it's all there is, so fine tuning is dubious at best (it's just an unknown). As for having a beginning, that's just Newtonian thinking. General relativity tells us that time is internal to the universe and what we have is a space-time manifold, which didn't (as a whole) have a beginning.

Again you just putting your god into a gap - something we don't understand (yet) - then arbitrarily deciding that it doesn't need explaining.



But you really haven't provided a reason to think that a god (let alone your specific god) is a good explanation that should be taken seriously, rather than just a guess you'd rather like to be true for other reasons.

Well before we continue, is there any argument, evidence, discovery, observation etc. that would convince you that the universe was designed? Is there anything that you couldn’t dismiss by saying “well it’s a god of the gaps”

Even if we take the universe to be designed, that still doesn't mean that anything like a monotheistic god did it. Which leads me to another point, if it was designed for life (which is the implication) the it's a bizarre way to do it. Why is almost all of it inhospitable to life? Why make something you have to wait billions of years for it to produce a tiny environment on a tiny speck? If the universe actually was like the ancients thought, with the earth at the centre and being the most important object, then you'd have much more of a case.

If the earth happens to be in the center would that be strong evidence for design……….. or would you say well “it´s just a God of the gaps”

Shrug* at random, I rather like conformal cycling cosmology. Neatly explains the entropy 'problem' and it's rather an eccentric approach (which sort of appeals to me). It's still just a guess, but is is based on what we know and it makes a few tentative predictions.

Ok, and how does cyclic cosmology solves the FT problem?................for the sake of the thread I have no problem in assuming that the model is true.

 

[leroy]

Well, no. If the sum is really zero, then you do not need to explain any net energy coming from somewhere.

You are misunderstanding what scientists say, when they hypothesize “zero energy“……. If you have a $100USD bill in your wallet and you have a $100USD debt with the bank, you could say that you have “zero money” but that doesn’t mean that you don’t need to explain where the $100usd bill came from.


The point is that zero energy, doesn’t mean “zero energy” in the literal form of the word, its just a catchy label that scientist use

and that is much more than an intriguing possibility, since it relates to the large scale curvature of space, which appears to be also zero.

Is that evidence for atheism? If not, then why even mention it?

On top of that, and even more seriously for your case, the first principle speaks of energy being constant in time. At least on average. Ergo, it is is not applicable when not even time “existed”. You are basically saying: there was zero energy before and, boom, a lot of energy afterwards. Ergo, the first principle is violated because the energy did not remain constant. The problem here is obvious: there was no before, and therefore the principle is not applicable.

So you had Nothing (not even time) and then energy came from nowhere… do you honestly don’t see any problems with that view?

 

[ratiocinator]

Well before we continue, is there any argument, evidence, discovery, observation etc. that would convince you that the universe was designed? Is there anything that you couldn’t dismiss by saying “well it’s a god of the gaps”

An obvious message on the scale of the observable universe or encoded in its basic laws, I guess would be quite convincing.

If the earth happens to be in the center would that be strong evidence for design……….. or would you say well “it´s just a God of the gaps”

Well, if the Earth was most of the universe, instead of a tiny speck that took billions of years to get into a state that it's life-friendly, that would make "the universe was designed for life" a far more compelling argument.

Ok, and how does cyclic cosmology solves the FT problem?................for the sale of the thread I have no problem in assuming that the model is true.

As I pointed in another post, a god doesn't solve the FT 'problem'. The answer is that it doesn't directly, although it is a kind of (sequential) multiverse, so you could combine it with varying parameters for each cycle, I guess.

The problem with any attempt to answer the question "why do things exist and are the way they are, so that we happen to exist" is that nothing at all is going to answer it completely satisfactorily because we can always ask "why" again. That applies just as much to a 'supernatural'/designed/god answer as to a scientific one.

 

[ratiocinator]

So you had Nothing (not even time) and then energy came from nowhere… do you honestly don’t see any problems with that view?

How quaintly Newtonian. No, that's the wrong picture. General relativity tells us we live in a space-time manifold. Time is just an (observer dependant) direction through it and any conservation laws are likewise internal to it. It (the whole manifold) didn't start to exist even if it's finite in the past timelike direction through it.

And energy is not something, it's only a property of physical systems and its conservation is entirely dependent on the time translation symmetry of the laws of physics. It's not even clear if it's conserved for the entire universe anyway.

Try reading this:

The conservation of energy is a common feature in many physical theories. From a mathematical point of view it is understood as a consequence of Noether's theorem, developed by Emmy Noether in 1915 and first published in 1918. The theorem states every continuous symmetry of a physical theory has an associated conserved quantity; if the theory's symmetry is time invariance then the conserved quantity is called "energy". The energy conservation law is a consequence of the shift symmetry of time; energy conservation is implied by the empirical fact that the laws of physics do not change with time itself. Philosophically this can be stated as "nothing depends on time per se". In other words, if the physical system is invariant under the continuous symmetry of time translation then its energy (which is canonical conjugate quantity to time) is conserved. Conversely, systems which are not invariant under shifts in time (an example, systems with time dependent potential energy) do not exhibit conservation of energy – unless we consider them to exchange energy with another, external system so that the theory of the enlarged system becomes time invariant again. Conservation of energy for finite systems is valid in such physical theories as special relativity and quantum theory (including QED) in the flat space-time.
...
With the discovery of special relativity by Henri Poincaré and Albert Einstein, energy was proposed to be one component of an energy-momentum 4-vector.
...
Thus, the rule of conservation of energy over time in special relativity continues to hold, so long as the reference frame of the observer is unchanged. This applies to the total energy of systems, although different observers disagree as to the energy value.
...
In general relativity, energy–momentum conservation is not well-defined except in certain special cases. Energy-momentum is typically expressed with the aid of a stress–energy–momentum pseudotensor. However, since pseudotensors are not tensors, they do not transform cleanly between reference frames. If the metric under consideration is static (that is, does not change with time) or asymptotically flat (that is, at an infinite distance away spacetime looks empty), then energy conservation holds without major pitfalls. In practice, some metrics such as the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric do not satisfy these constraints and energy conservation is not well defined. The theory of general relativity leaves open the question of whether there is a conservation of energy for the entire universe.​

From: Conservation of energy - Wikipedia

 

[The Hammer]

So sensitive, that it is extremely prone to delusion and hallucination.

Delusions and Hallucinations are real to the person perceiving them.

 

[leroy]

An obvious message on the scale of the observable universe or encoded in its basic laws, I guess would be quite convincing.

What would stop you from saying, well science is incomplete, and perhaps in the future we will find an explanation for that message…. Maybe the message is a consequence of an unknown natural law............. so please stop invoking a God of the Gaps....

Well, if the Earth was most of the universe, instead of a tiny speck that took billions of years to get into a state that it's life-friendly, that would make "the universe was designed for life" a far more compelling argument.

Why? Why would the existence of God be more probable in a small universe?

As I pointed in another post, a god doesn't solve the FT 'problem'. The answer is that it doesn't directly, although it is a kind of (sequential) multiverse, so you could combine it with varying parameters for each cycle, I guess.

The problem with any attempt to answer the question "why do things exist and are the way they are, so that we happen to exist" is that nothing at all is going to answer it completely satisfactorily because we can always ask "why" again. That applies just as much to a 'supernatural'/designed/god answer as to a scientific one.

The problem is that if the parameters vary randomly on each cycle, it would have been much , much, much, more likely to have observers that live in a simple universe (say just 1 planet and 1 star) than in a big universe like ours. (in other words, you have to deal with the Boltzmann brain paradox)

Statistically speaking it would be more likely to have observers in a small universe, that are currently dreaming, they are having a strange dream where the universe is big. The implication is that you would have to conclude that the universe that you live in is simple, and the observations of a complex universe are just a dream…… soon you will wake up and wonder about that absurd dream that you just had.

In fact the most common type of observers would be Boltzmann brains, so under your view, you have to conclude that you are a Boltzmann brain.

 

[ratiocinator]

Why would the existence of God be more probable in a small universe?

I didn't say, that. If most of the universe was hospitable to life (rather than just a tiny speck that took billions of years to form) then the idea that it was designed for life would be more convincing.

The problem is that if the parameters vary randomly on each cycle, it would have been much , much, much, more likely to have observers that live in a simple universe (say just 1 planet and 1 star) than in a big universe like ours. (in other words, you have to deal with the Boltzmann brain paradox)

Depends on the constraints. We're back to guessing games. I'm not proposing an answer here (I don't know), you are.

And you ignored my main point. Even a god doesn't explain FT and nothing is ever going to satisfactorily explain everything because we can always go on asking why. I don't have a way out of that problem but making up a god doesn't help.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I didn't say, that. If most of the universe was hospitable to life (rather than just a tiny speck that took billions of years to form) then the idea that it was designed for life would be more convincing.



Depends on the constraints. We're back to guessing games. I'm not proposing an answer here (I don't know), you are.

And you ignored my main point. Even a god doesn't explain FT and nothing is ever going to satisfactorily explain everything because we can always go on asking why. I don't have a way out of that problem but making up a god doesn't help.

Only way to understand this is with Agrippa's Trilemma. In effect all attempts to explain the origin of the universe are cognitive, what ever it is chosen including that there is no, and thus they all run into the limits of reasoning; i.e. Agrippa's Trilemma.
So I go what the skeptical option and answer: I don't know.

 

[leroy]

I didn't say, that. If most of the universe was hospitable to life (rather than just a tiny speck that took billions of years to form) then the idea that it was designed for life would be more convincing.

Well that simply shows a lack of understanding of the argument, the argument states that the best explanation for the FT that we observe is design.

If you what to make an independent argument arguing that most of the universe is “not hospitable” for life, feel free to do it, but that would we completely independent of the FT argument.


The fine tunning of the universe is analogous to the “message” that you said would suggest that the universe is designed. So if you said that you would accept the message as evidnece, then why wouldn’t you accept FT as evidence?

And you ignored my main point. Even a god doesn't explain FT and nothing is ever going to satisfactorily explain everything because we can always go on asking why. I don't have a way out of that problem but making up a god doesn't help.

Nobody is making up a God, I am proposing God as the best explanation, based on the evidence that we have….

Your alternative explanation (cyclic universe) can be refuted by the Boltzmann Brain paradox. So unless you find an equally good reputation for intelligent design, you have to admit that design is a better explanation.

I don't have a way out of that problem but making up a god doesn't help

That is exactly my point, if we ever find a message in the universe, you can simply say "i dont have a way out of the problem, but making up a God doesnt help"

My point is that no matter what evidence is shown to you, you can always reject the argument using that same logic.

Flat Earthers can use the same logic ........“I don’t know why people in Australia see different stars than people from USA, but making up a globe doesn’t help” ….

 

[ratiocinator]

Well that simply shows a lack of understanding of the argument, the argument states that the best explanation for the FT that we observe is design.

Where is the actual argument? All you seem to be saying is something like "oh, look, if things where different we wouldn't exist, so things must have been designed for us to exist" which is either a total non-sequitur or is begging the question (by just assuming that the outcome was intended as one of your premises).

"This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!'" -- Douglas Adams

Even if you make up a god, it too would have to be "fine tuned" to be the sort that wanted to create this sort of universe.

Flat Earthers can use the same logic ........“I don’t know why people in Australia see different stars than people from USA, but making up a globe doesn’t help” ….

Utter nonsense. A globe actually does answer that problem, whereas a god doesn't answer the question of why things exist and are the way they are.

 

[leroy]

Where is the actual argument? All you seem to be saying is something like "oh, look, if things where different we wouldn't exist, so things must have been designed for us to exist" which is either a total non-sequitur or is begging the question (by just assuming that the outcome was intended as one of your premises).

Well its analogous to finding a message in the universe, if you look at some distant galaxie and the stars spell out a message (say the first 10 verses of genesis) we would say “ooh look if stars where different we wouldn’t be observing that text It must have been designed”

So the way I see it, nothing would convince you that the universe is designed, not even the message that you proposed earlier.

Utter nonsense. A globe actually does answer that problem, whereas a god doesn't answer the question of why things exist and are the way they are.

Yes a designer does answer that problem; an intelligent designer can intentionally and willingly select the correct values, despite any statistical improbability.

 

[ratiocinator]

Yes a designer does answer that problem; an intelligent designer can intentionally and willingly select the correct values, despite any statistical improbability.

Except it obviously doesn't because the designer would part of what exists and is the way it is. Also, if the designer was different, and didn't want to make this sort of universe, we wouldn't exist, so the designer would be just as "fine tuned" for our existence as the universe. You haven't solved either problem, you've just added a blind guess that's moved them about a bit.