The universe is proof of god!

[Lion IRC]

^^^

 

[Copernicus]

View attachment 15762

I think that little .gif destroys every version of the Cosmological Argument.

The problem is that folks who stumble across an ornate fob watch in the forest don't like being told not to ask who created it and how it got there. And they certainly don't like being told there's no design intent or purpose behind a watch.

What is the fob watch doing? Tic toc tic toc tic toc.....
Hmmm?

The problem with the Paley's Watchmaker metaphor is that it depends on one's ability to distinguish engineered from natural objects. However, the ultimate conclusion is that there are no natural objects at all. So, if the conclusion is correct, then it basically eats itself into oblivion. Everything that we encounter has been intelligently engineered. So the question is--what motivates that gut feeling that human-engineered products are different from natural objects?

ETA
Remember how annoying it was as a child when you asked a question and some lazy adult, who couldn't be bothered, answered you with the words..."just because"?

Thats Occams Razor.

Unanswered, avoided questions don't yield parsimony.

Saying..."it just is" - that's not elegant simplicity. That's intellectual laziness. (Or being gutless)

You have misunderstood Occam's Razor. It is not an endorsement of a  Just-So Story. It refers to the problem inherent in taking an argument and inserting an additional step in the argument that is unnecessary. So it is exactly about parsimony, since a valid argument with one less step is more parsimonious that one that reaches the same conclusion but contains an extra step.

Just to be clear, the theist argument rests on an assumption--that there is something which is uncreated. They assume that physical reality (the universe and/or multiverse) is created, which begs the question. Then they have to posit the existence of God in order to explain their assumption. What Jobar's image shows is that the assumption that physical reality (i.e. the "universe") is created causes an extra step in the argument. Occam's Razor shaves it away.

 

[jab]

View attachment 15762

I think that little .gif destroys every version of the Cosmological Argument.

The problem is that folks who stumble across an ornate fob watch in the forest don't like being told not to ask who created it and how it got there. And they certainly don't like being told there's no design intent or purpose behind a watch.

What is the fob watch doing? Tic toc tic toc tic toc.....
Hmmm?

ETA
Remember how annoying it was as a child when you asked a question and some lazy adult, who couldn't be bothered, answered you with the words..."just because"?

Thats Occams Razor.

Unanswered, avoided questions don't yield parsimony.

Saying..."it just is" - that's not elegant simplicity. That's intellectual laziness. (Or being gutless)

"It" or "he," if you prefer your God dicked, "just exists and/ or always has existed" is intellectual laziness, often compounded by wishful thinking.

 

[James Brown]

If a child asks his father how a magician made a dove disappear, and the father replies, “It’s
magic,” we would hardly accept this as an explanation. Yet the theist attempts the same kind of
maneuver. To his own question, “How do we explain natural phenomena?” the theist replies, “It’s
supernatural”—which, when translated, means: “It’s unknowable.”

Just as “magic” is not an explanation, so the “supernatural” is not an explanation, but is a
concession that no explanation is possible. Because the concept of god has absolutely no
explanatory power, it can never be inferred from nature as an explanation for natural phenomena.
If, as the theist claims, the existence of the universe (or some aspect of it) requires an explanation,
the positing of a supernatural being does not provide it.

--George H. Smith, "Atheism: The Case Against God"

 

[Underseer]

The watchmaker metaphor?

Oh goodie!

Here's the thing.

We know that watch-makers are manufactured because we can go to a watch-factory and watch them being manufactured. We know that they are manufactured because we have direct evidence of them being manufactured by watch-factories.

So does this mean Lion has evidence of God creating universes? Is there a universe factory we can go to somewhere and watch God creating universes that look like ours?

 

[bilby]

If a man should stumble upon a watch upon a heath, he knows immediately that it is a made thing; it stands out from all the natural things - the grass, the trees, the beetles, even the man himself.

Clearly those more complex 'living' things are unlike anything made by a designer.

And clearly Pawley is an idiot.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

View attachment 15762

I think that little .gif destroys every version of the Cosmological Argument.

The problem is that folks who stumble across an ornate fob watch in the forest don't like being told not to ask who created it and how it got there.

Fibonacci Pattern

Order isn't common, but it happens.

And they certainly don't like being told there's no design intent or purpose behind a watch.

What is the fob watch doing? Tic toc tic toc tic toc.....

What in the universe was designed? We have natural processes that give creation to all sorts of things in the universe.

Which reminds me... pulsars.

Hmmm?

Next time we see a clock in space ticking, we'll keep your observation in mind.

ETA
Remember how annoying it was as a child when you asked a question and some lazy adult, who couldn't be bothered, answered you with the words..."just because"?

Thats Occams Razor.

Unanswered, avoided questions don't yield parsimony.

Neither does language equal science.

Saying..."it just is" - that's not elegant simplicity. That's intellectual laziness. (Or being gutless)

I think a kettle would object to that statement.

 

[Keith&Co.]

And they certainly don't like being told there's no design intent or purpose behind a watch.

.

What in the universe was designed? We have natural processes that give creation to all sorts of things in the universe.

I love the 'watch in the wild' thought experiment.

FIRST, we find something that MUST be designed, exactly because the watch is UNLIKE the rest of nature.

Watch =! Nature

THEN we look at nature and decided it must be designed because nature IS JUST LIKE the watch.

Watch = Nature

And the proponent of the comparison likes to pretend that this hypocrisy is the MORE rational position to take...

 

[James Brown]

Now consider the idea that nature itself is the product of design. How could this be
demonstrated? Nature, as we have seen, provides the basis of comparison by which we distinguish
between designed objects and natural objects. We are able to infer the presence of design only to
the extent that the characteristics of an object differ from natural characteristics. Therefore, to claim
that nature as a whole was designed is to destroy the basis by which we differentiate between
artifacts and natural objects. Evidences of design are those characteristics not found in nature, so it
is impossible to produce evidence of design within the context of nature itself. Only if we first step
beyond nature, and establish the existence of a supernatural designer, can we conclude that nature
is the result of conscious planning.

--George H. Smith, "Atheism: The Case Against God"

 

[Wiploc]

P1: God is defined as a being who creates universes.
P2: The universe exists.
C1: Therefore, God exists.

If you're trying for a valid syllogism, you need the premises to kind of overlap.

Consider this one:

If A then B.
A.
Therefore, B

See how A is in P1 and recurs exactly in P2?

So maybe something like,

If the universe was created, then a god exists.
The universe was created.
Therefore, a god exists.

 

[Lion IRC]

The problem with the Paley's Watchmaker metaphor is that it depends on one's ability to distinguish engineered from natural objects

I'm sorry you find that a "problem"
Paley would argue that it's precisely our ability to do so which leads to unavoidable why questions.

 

[bilby]

The problem with the Paley's Watchmaker metaphor is that it depends on one's ability to distinguish engineered from natural objects

I'm sorry you find that a "problem"
Paley would argue that it's precisely our ability to do so which leads to unavoidable why questions.

Like "If nature is designed, why do we immediately spot the difference between a designed object and the nature that surrounds it"?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The problem with the Paley's Watchmaker metaphor is that it depends on one's ability to distinguish engineered from natural objects

I'm sorry you find that a "problem"
Paley would argue that it's precisely our ability to do so which leads to unavoidable why questions.

The universe a vast arena of relatively empty space. Like a watch, the universe does consist of lots of moving objects. However, unlike a watch, nothing in the universe has a specific purpose and isn't expendable. If one were to arbitrarily remove an entire galaxy, there would be an interruption to the equilibrium, however, the surrounding galaxies would adjust naturally and find a new equilibrium.

The watch metaphor provides us absolutely no analogy to the universe.

 

[Copernicus]

The problem with the Paley's Watchmaker metaphor is that it depends on one's ability to distinguish engineered from natural objects

I'm sorry you find that a "problem"
Paley would argue that it's precisely our ability to do so which leads to unavoidable why questions.

If you are going to refute my argument that it is a problem, then you should include the part where I explain why I found it a problem:

The problem with the Paley's Watchmaker metaphor is that it depends on one's ability to distinguish engineered from natural objects. However, the ultimate conclusion is that there are no natural objects at all. So, if the conclusion is correct, then it basically eats itself into oblivion. Everything that we encounter has been intelligently engineered. So the question is--what motivates that gut feeling that human-engineered products are different from natural objects?

So, there is the unavoidable "why" (i.e. "what motivates") question that Paley thought he was avoiding. And you, too. You also avoided it. Care to try to answer it? I can explain some basic differences between artificially engineered objects and those that are naturally engineered by evolutionary processes, if you'd like.

 

[OLDMAN]

The problem with the Paley's Watchmaker metaphor is that it depends on one's ability to distinguish engineered from natural objects

I'm sorry you find that a "problem"
Paley would argue that it's precisely our ability to do so which leads to unavoidable why questions.

Like "If nature is designed, why do we immediately spot the difference between a designed object and the nature that surrounds it"?

Amazing you can't see the lack of logic in your thinking.Lion.

 

[Underseer]

The problem with the Paley's Watchmaker metaphor is that it depends on one's ability to distinguish engineered from natural objects

I'm sorry you find that a "problem"
Paley would argue that it's precisely our ability to do so which leads to unavoidable why questions.

And I already explained why Paley's argument is nonsense.

Even if we never saw a watch factory, it looks like other things we have seen manufactured in factories for other devices.

So if you want to claim that you know the universe is designed as per Paley's argument, then you still have to provide evidence of God, then provide evidence of the universe factory God uses to create universes or things so much like universes that you were able to make the logical leap from those other things to universes.

In other words, you still owe us the same level of evidence we have for the manufacture of watches.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Here is a man made thing.

The Atlantic Portuguese man o' war (Physalia physalis), also known as the man-of-war or floating terror, is a marinehydrozoan of the family Physaliidae found in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans. Its venomous long tentacles deliver a painful sting, which is venomous and powerful enough to kill fish or (rarely) humans. Despite its appearance, the Portuguese man o' war is not a true jellyfish but a siphonophore, which is not actually a single multicellular organism (true jellyfish are single organisms), but a colonial organism made up of specialized individual animals (of the same species) called zooids or polyps. These polyps are attached to one another and physiologically integrated, to the extent that they cannot survive independently, and therefore have to work together and function like an individual animal.

 

[Lion IRC]

Like "If nature is designed, why do we immediately spot the difference between a designed object and the nature that surrounds it"?

Amazing you can't see the lack of logic in your thinking.Lion.

If I couldn't distinguish between this...



And this...



Then you would have a point.

Can we legitimately say to William Paley that the fob watch evolved and is there in the forest by pure chance?

 

[bilby]

Like "If nature is designed, why do we immediately spot the difference between a designed object and the nature that surrounds it"?

Amazing you can't see the lack of logic in your thinking.Lion.

If I couldn't distinguish between this...

View attachment 15845

And this...

View attachment 15844

Then you would have a point.

Can we legitimately say to William Paley that the fob watch evolved and is there in the forest by pure chance?

No, we cannot. Which is the whole point. The watch is clearly out of place; it is very obviously UNlike the trees - because it is a designed object. To then say 'a-ha! Trees are just like watches so they must be designed too' is a complete non sequitur.

Paley's argument boils down to:

X stands out from B, because X is designed, while B is natural. But B is, (like X), complex; Therefore X and B must both be designed.

The conclusion directly contradicts the opening premise.

 

[abaddon]

The watch is just an analogy to the forest, so Lion IRC doesn't care about the distinction between "artificial" and "natural" that people keep making.

It's the sameness that exists in spite of the differences that he wants to emphasize: both were made by something else than chance.

There's the different use of language and basic assumptions in the warp of the theist "worldview" that have to be untangled a bit to get a point like his. "Laws" of nature are imposed upon nature, for example. Patterns don't emerge and grow into complex systems. That's likely why he picked an image with lines and numbers, to show the engineering of a mind involved even in the making of a sand dune.

So a watch serves as the analogy: as man is to a watch, so is God to a forest. You can't say to Paley one's made and one's not-made, because to Lion all things are made.

The only alternative he can think of is pure chance did it.