We have a sample size of one universe/reality. We have no known designed or non designed ones to compare it to. It's therefor not valid to conclude that our universe is or isn't designed, and trying to work that out based on what we view inside it is fallacious.

The only God that is consistent with science is one which set things going and then sat back and watched / wandered off / died. In other words, the deistic God. Although using the word "God" is so much unnecessary baggage. Creator would do just fine! Anything further to this is blind speculation in my opinion, as is thinking we know anything about this creator. We have no good reason to believe this creator has interacted since creating all of this.

Your definition of God sounds entirely like a job description, rather than having any specific details of an actual being. It seems to imply that I would be the God of a simulation I run that manifests somehow with self aware AI. I can be virtually all-powerful with regard to this simulation in that I can screw around with it directly in pretty much any way I like. I can "know" everything about it by getting read outs from my simulation. I can pause time, rewind time, anything I like. I'd be seen as an almighty creator super powerful God to those AIs, but in my own reality I'm just a guy with no similar amount of control over my own environment.

Let me ask you Kingpin, why do you worship a god? I get that you think one exists, but what's the point in worship? As I've stated, even if I thought a god existed, I wouldn't worship it as I find it an obscene concept. Any God that requires/demands worship of its hapless minions, watching them grovel before deciding which bin to throw them in after they die is not worthy of worship in my opinion. The only motivation I can see is fear. It presumably took God literally zero effort to create and sustain our reality, so isn't a single thank you enough?

I hate the question proposed in the OP. It would be like asking if science has negated the need for Thor to explain lightening. There is no need to negate things that never existed in the first place. There is a need for more humans looking for evidence and facts instead of fishing for excuses to cling to bad claims.

If there is a "God", there is an infinity of possibilities. The idea that scribbled ramblings by primitive people 2000 years ago just happened to nail exactly the right version of God is not at all logical and amounts to wishful thinking. There's no reason to believe there is any truth to it beyond a few historical facts that can be verified. You'd have just as much, probably more, chance of accurately describing God by just sitting down and making it up yourself. The assumption that one of the religions we have must be "correct" is entirely unfounded, even if there is a god.

Taken altogether, they still have a zero probability between them amongst the infinity of possibilities. That is why Pascals a Wager is such a terrible argument. Not only does it fail to give a good reason to pick a religion (because belief is not a choice), it actually proves why the probability of any particular religion being correct is effectively zero.

(July 27, 2015 at 7:20 pm)Esquilax Wrote: I'd also like to add that this "complexity equals design!" argument fails to take into account emergent complexity; that is, complexity that results over time due to an expansion or collection of simple things. It assumes that the universe was always complex, which we know was not the case, given that prior to the big bang all we had was a dense point of spacetime. The universe gained its complexity over an extremely large span of time via the interactions of very simple things. All that we see now simply was not present at the beginning of the expansionary universe, it formed over time; we didn't even have heavy elements in the early universe.

Bible Verse Attack!!!

Ecclesiastes 1:9-11King James Version (KJV)

9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
10 Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.
11 There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.

Burn! This verse proves that there is nothing new in science and that everything will be forgotten once we get bored with science and go back to praising our god of magic, fighting with swords, and sacrificing shit.

(July 27, 2015 at 12:57 pm)lkingpinl Wrote: What I am showing is that we see something with complexity, function and purpose and we immediately assume a mind behind it.  Do you not look at something as simple as a letter and assume someone with a mind produced it?  

I find it fascinating how we can take something simple as the internal combustion engine and assume there was a mind behind it, but see something infinitely more complex as the universe and say its pure chance with no need for an intelligence behind it?  I don't find that logic very convincing.

I think that human history shows that we did apply that thinking to the world around us early on; anything that could not be explained (mostly due to a lack of knowledge and understanding) we ascribed to supernatural powers of some kind. Weather, disease, natural disasters, fire, lightning, and so on. As human knowledge and understanding grew, we learned more. We then sought out more knowledge and understanding and eventually developed the scientific method to try and make our learning more efficient. Throughout the greater part of that history, people believed in gods and spirits and the supernatural, to the degree that scientists who made discoveries that did not support religious beliefs had to deal with their own doubts, as well as possible persecution from religious and political authorities.

It is in that context that men who sought after knowledge kept coming up with discoveries and theories and inventions that moved the world forward. But they never came up with god. And that's the thing. Real science --applying the scientific method in order to learn more-- is neutral when it comes to god. If science found god and verified his existence, this would not affect science in any way. It might affect individual scientists --such as those who didn't believe in god, or those who realize that they've been following the wrong one-- but the application of the scientific method to help us learn more would continue unabated. The fact that we keep coming up with explanations that neither include nor require god is notable in light of human history and our desire to find god.

It's not that we can't find god because we're skeptical. We have become skeptical because we never find god.

(July 27, 2015 at 11:29 am)lkingpinl Wrote: Honest questions here guys, curious to know your opinions.  

1.  Do you believe that modern science has completely done away with a need for God as an explanation for the universe?  

I wouldn't think about it in terms of "need". I think a better way to phrase that is "science explains more about how the universe works and is better for making predictions about it than God is".

(July 27, 2015 at 11:29 am)lkingpinl Wrote: 2.  Does one need to choose between God and Science?

So long as the god we're talking about doesn't disagree with things we can observe, then no. A lot of theists maintain their faith while believing in things like evolution, the big bang, or climate change. My wife is one of them.

(July 28, 2015 at 7:51 am)Tonus Wrote:

(July 27, 2015 at 12:57 pm)lkingpinl Wrote: What I am showing is that we see something with complexity, function and purpose and we immediately assume a mind behind it.  Do you not look at something as simple as a letter and assume someone with a mind produced it?  

I find it fascinating how we can take something simple as the internal combustion engine and assume there was a mind behind it, but see something infinitely more complex as the universe and say its pure chance with no need for an intelligence behind it?  I don't find that logic very convincing.

I think that human history shows that we did apply that thinking to the world around us early on; anything that could not be explained (mostly due to a lack of knowledge and understanding) we ascribed to supernatural powers of some kind.  Weather, disease, natural disasters, fire, lightning, and so on.  As human knowledge and understanding grew, we learned more.  We then sought out more knowledge and understanding and eventually developed the scientific method to try and make our learning more efficient.  Throughout the greater part of that history, people believed in gods and spirits and the supernatural, to the degree that scientists who made discoveries that did not support religious beliefs had to deal with their own doubts, as well as possible persecution from religious and political authorities.

It is in that context that men who sought after knowledge kept coming up with discoveries and theories and inventions that moved the world forward.  But they never came up with god.  And that's the thing.  Real science --applying the scientific method in order to learn more-- is neutral when it comes to god.  If science found god and verified his existence, this would not affect science in any way.  It might affect individual scientists --such as those who didn't believe in god, or those who realize that they've been following the wrong one-- but the application of the scientific method to help us learn more would continue unabated.  The fact that we keep coming up with explanations that neither include nor require god is notable in light of human history and our desire to find god.

It's not that we can't find god because we're skeptical.  We have become skeptical because we never find god.

A great deal of the founders of modern science, Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Boyle, etc were theists and continued to be after their discoveries and contributions.  Netwon wrote his Principia Mathematica in hopes that others might believe.  C.S. Lewis put it this way: Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature.  They expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Law giver.  There are a great deal of scientists today that identify as Deists/Theists. 

Modern Scientists all agree that the universe had a beginning and further that it is a closed system.  Neither side can prove the cause of the beginning.  Science will continue to pursue in hopes to answer it by natural means and deist/theists espouse that there must be a creator that lies outside this system that put the whole thing in to motion.  

Modern science still ascribes to the universe being created from "nothing" and that definition of nothing is varying.  It cannot be explained and the only answer I've heard that I can accept is that we don't yet know.  Agreed but could that be classified as a "science of the gaps" argument?  We don't know but science will explain it.  Perhaps.  To me personally I find it much more plausible that there is a mind behind the beginning as I look at the universe and I see order, design and intelligence.

(July 28, 2015 at 9:11 am)lkingpinl Wrote: Science will continue to pursue in hopes to answer it by natural means and deist/theists espouse that there must be a creator that lies outside this system that put the whole thing in to motion.

No, that is my point. Science will continue to pursue knowledge because there are still things to discover and learn. It does not have a specific goal of finding the natural cause for every effect, just the cause. Whether or not the cause is god, science does its job. It is the deist/theist who wants for the answers to fit into a particular framework. A scientist may be confident that he will not find god and he may even desire such an answer, but as those scientists of the past learned, reality does not bend to such whims. It just is what it is.

OP, several people have replied to your claim that the universe seems to require a designer due to its complexity, function, and purpose. You have not justified how complexity, in and of itself, points to an intelligent designer (see especially Esquilax's post in which he discusses emergent complexity); you have not justified the claim implicit in your analogy between the universe and designed objects such as internal combustion engines, i.e., that the universe has function or purpose -- much less explained what that purpose is; and you have not dealt with those who pointed out that one distinguishes designed objects only be contrast with naturally occurring objects (and not by noting that it is complex).

Now that it appears you are abandoning that line of argument to spew the cosmological argument, as per the apologists' playbook, is it fair to conclude that you concede your argument from design is flawed, or is this simply a case of moving on to throw shit against a wall to see what sticks? We get a lot of that here.

If I can guess the next argument you'll turn to when the cosmological argument also goes down in flames, do I win a prize?

Science says we don't know what happened with any degree of confidence before a certain point.

As far as I'm aware, it doesn't say that the universe necessarily had a beginning, or that it came from nothing. We just don't know. If either of these have become the consensus, it's news to me and I'd be interested in the source!

Sure theists can do good science... but by being scientific and keeping their theistic beliefs separate.