My ignorance is showing.

[_dartagnan]

Where is the evidence supporting a creator?

The best way to express it, I think, is to refer to an "intelligent source" responsible for writing the laws of the universe. "Creator" carries with it too many variables that seem to get confused with today's religions. Once an intelligent source writes the laws ans sets everything in motion, the universe naturally evolves to what it is today, including life on earth. Evolution explains how life evolved, but not the origin of life. When did life go live? How? Evolution doesn't explain this. No verifiable scientific theory can explain it either. What is responsible for programming DNA? An intelligent source is the best explanation the same way an intelligent source is the best explanation for the reason Mt. Rushmore has faces carved into it. Just looking at it you know that didn't happen from natural erosion.

What scientists are coming to realize is that the random universe is becoming less likely an explanation for our existence. The more they learn about the universe, the more it looks like a "put up job." This is what convinced the famous atheist, Antony Flew to become a theist.

I've posted tons on this topic if you're interested in doing a search. Right now my brain is consumed with politics or else I'd post more.

[_Mad Viking]

The best way to express it, I think, is to refer to an "intelligent source" responsible for writing the laws of the universe. "Creator" carries with it too many variables that seem to get confused with today's religions. Once an intelligent source writes the laws ans sets everything in motion, the universe naturally evolves to what it is today, including life on earth. Evolution explains how life evolved, but not the origin of life.

It is my understanding that evolution doesn’t attempt to explain this.

How? Evolution doesn't explain this. No verifiable scientific theory can explain it either. What is responsible for programming DNA? An intelligent source is the best explanation the same way an intelligent source is the best explanation for the reason Mt. Rushmore has faces carved into it. Just looking at it you know that didn't happen from natural erosion.

Since this is not a scientific explanation I find it unfulfilling. I learn nothing from it.

Like I said before, I can accept the possibility of some sort of intelligence arbitrarily setting the whole thing in motion. But that answer is not going to inspire any sort of devotion or worship from me. From the standpoint of religion, I might as well be an atheist.

[_Analytics]

Where is the evidence supporting a creator?

An intelligent source is the best explanation the same way an intelligent source is the best explanation for the reason Mt. Rushmore has faces carved into it. Just looking at it you know that didn't happen from natural erosion.

In determining whether Mount Rushmore is the result of an intelligent sculptor or the mere result of natural forces, I would compare it to other mountains. I would compare its actual features to how I would expect it to look if its form were the result of natural laws. Based upon this comparison, I could determine whether or not there was an intelligent sculptor.

How can I do the same process with the actual laws of the universe itself? First, I’d need to see a collection of universes governed by natural laws that are natural, so that I could know what real natural laws look like. I’d try to gain an understanding of what natural phenomena cause the laws of a universe to be truly natural. I’d then compare our universe to a natural universe. Could the true underlying laws of nature bring into existence a universe with universal constants like the ones we observe here?

If not, then I’d agree that a meddler must be responsible for giving us a universe that is unatural. If I were to determine that the universal constants of this universe really are an intricate, unnatural balance (based upon a comparison of the universal constants in natural universes), then I'd agree that an intelligent designer must be responsible.

[_dartagnan]

It is my understanding that evolution doesn’t attempt to explain this.

And you're right, it doesn't. But the idea has been frequently abused by atheists to suggest that it does. Just last week I was reading an article referring to McCain's position: "McCain said during a debate last year that he believed in evolution when it came to the origin of life." http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gV5j ... AD92V3VQG0

But like you said evolution is not a theory of the origin of life. But so many anti-religionists, including this journalist, think it is.

Since this is not a scientific explanation I find it unfulfilling. I learn nothing from it.

Anything scientific will be theory only, so you'll learn nothing either way.

Like I said before, I can accept the possibility of some sort of intelligence arbitrarily setting the whole thing in motion.

That is my position.

But that answer is not going to inspire any sort of devotion or worship from me

.

Of course not. You wouldn't even know what to worship.

From the standpoint of religion, I might as well be an atheist.

Why? Many theists accept the evidence for God and worship nothing. Einstein for example. It doesn't mean they have to deny the evidence and reject the fact that the universe we live in was by design. That's silly.

The way I see it, since the mountain of cosmic evidence favors the existence of an intelligent source, one of the current religions could be true. But at this point I have no reason to believe any particular one is.

[_The Dude]

It's pretty lame if you ask me, what creationists are doing these days when they've given up arguing that God put the pieces of life together himself. Now maybe they accept that evolution could have put the pieces together, and God instead gets credit for setting up the conditions that made evolution possible.

They just keep pushing God to the fringe, to the point of vanishing relevance. What's next?

[_dartagnan]

Aww, duder.

I'm sorry your upset that people still give credit to God for programming the laws of the universe, even evolution.

Maybe in another decade science will be able to prove God doesn't exist once and for all. Then you'll finally have happiness and fulfillment in your life, knowing you've completely destroyed the faiths of millions. You could always release your frustrations by watching Schmo kick a retarded pregnant woman in the stomach. He thinks that kid is better off dead anyway.

Who says people don't rely on atheism as another form of religion? It seems like society's greatest and latest power-trip.

I never understood why people get so upset because others don't believe as they do. Do EA and Duder show this much contempt for their theistic colleagues who work in the sciences? Do they talk down to them, or do they vent their frustrations only among us intellectual peons?

I've yet to meet an atheist who can accept even the possibility that others have experienced spiritual things beyond psychological or scientific explanation. It is better if they can convince themselves, and everyone else around them, that these people are just crackpots.

What I find most interesting about the anthropic principle and the argument from fine tuning, is that it places humanity back in the center of the universe again. Not literally, of course. This drives atheists completely nuts because it makes the religious author of Genesis 1 appear knowledgable about things scientists would only discover thousands of years later.

Everything we know about the universe points to purpose and design. Whose purpose? Life on earth (until we discover life elsewhere). Does God need to have created everything exactly as the Bible says? No. The Bible is fraught with allegory and metaphor. But the fact that the Bible teaches the universe was created with us in mind, is astonishing given what cosmologists and astronomers are saying today.

OK. I said I would refrain from this topic until the election is over. I need to stick by that.

[_The Dude]

What I find most interesting about the anthropic principle and the argument from fine tuning, is that it places humanity back in the center of the universe again. Not literally, of course. This drives atheists completely nuts...

Or maybe it drives them nuts that you think the anthropic principle is the same as a theistic argument for an intelligent designer. That takes a whole lot for granted, since Thama's link gives seven possibilities, and only one of them is ID:

1.The absurd universe: It just happens to be that way.

2. The unique universe: There is a deep underlying unity in physics which necessitates the universe being this way. Some 'Theory of Everything' will explain why the various features of the Universe must have exactly the values that we see.

3. The multiverse: Multiple Universes exist which have all possible combinations of characteristics, and we naturally find ourselves within the one that supports our existence.

4. Intelligent Design: An intelligent Creator designed the Universe specifically to support complexity and the emergence of Intelligence.

5. The life principle: There is an underlying principle that constrains the universe to evolve towards life and mind.

6. The self-explaining universe: A closed explanatory or causal loop: 'perhaps only universes with a capacity for consciousness can exist'.

7. The fake universe: We are living in a virtual reality simulation.

I favor #1, which isn't much different from your belief in an absurd deity who just happens to be that way. Well, it is different in being simpler.

[_Thama]

I favor #1, which isn't much different from your belief in an absurd deity who just happens to be that way. Well, it is different in being simpler.

Perhaps we as humans (or just me, specifically) are inherently biased towards looking at events through the lens of probability, even when probability isn't useful or accurate. However, confessing that bias, options 2 and 3 make the most sense to me. Options 4 and 7 are fun to think about and are somewhere within the realm of possibility, but seem much less likely.

The absurd universe option seems even less likely than the intelligent design option: while we can be pretty confident that the absurd universe is absurdly improbable, there is no way to judge how probable the intelligent design option would be. The fact that it fails Occam's razor isn't much of a disadvantage when thinking cosmologically: most of modern physics seems to fail that particular medieval test (at least, from my physically amateurish perspective).

To me, the main flaw in ID is one that you hinted at: it offers no real explanatory function not already offered in the other 6 options. Where did the intelligence come from? Did it just happen (option 1)? Did it have to happen, according to inviolable natural law (option 2)? Is it fantastically improbable, but happened anyway due to an infinite sample size (option 3)?... etc. All of the questions of origin which apply to the universe would equally apply to an intelligence organizing or directing the formation of the universe.

[_Who Knows]

The odds of winning the lottery are astronomical. However, someone always wins. Are we to believe that the winner was chosen by a director since the odds were against him/her.

How about this for an example:

I just flipped a coin 100 times. It came up H, H, T, H, H, T, T, T, T, H, T, H, H, T, .... you get the idea.

So now tell me - what were the odds that I came up with that precise sequence? What are the odds that I could duplicate it? gazillions to 1?

Likewise, we humans sit here and say "what are the odds that all this stuff happened precisely as it did - to where we're sitting here today?" gazillions to 1?

[_The Nehor]

Thanks for the nostalgia. This was the first metaphysical debate I had with myself. Second grade recess I spent the whole of it sitting trying to figure out how likely I was to exist and how likely God was to exist. I came to no conclusion. I'm a lot smarter and know a lot more now. I still have come to no conclusion.

The problem is that probability extends to how likely something is to happen (through experimentation/observation). We have only one Universe to sample so we have no basis for comparison. If we had five God-created Universes and five random Universes that we could observe we could probably figure out which we are.