(April 5, 2025 at 9:26 am)Order Wrote: I will prove the existence of God to you in a way you have probably never heard before [...]

(April 5, 2025 at 3:12 pm)Drew_2013 Wrote:

(April 5, 2025 at 2:44 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Whether God exists has nothing to do the evolution of intelligent life.

Yes, we know that.

My certainty comes from the grindingly, creakingly, crashingly obvious mountain of evidence that there is no place in a natural universe for a supernatural Overseer.

Boru

That's a theological reason. How do you know what it takes to cause a universe to exist? The only thing we have to go on at this time is what happened after the universe began to exist. And what happened was a shitload of things to cause a planet like earth to exist. I don't have a problem with evolution. Its all the things necessary for their to be such a nice planet like earth. For instance the earlier universe didn't come with the ingredients such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur necessary for life and the material for rocky planets to exist.

Trite, but true. But it’s important to remember that planets didn’t exist in the earlier universe, either.

For someone who claims to not ‘have a problem with evolution’, you seem pretty resistant to it (universes evolve just like groups of organisms evolve).

Boru

(April 5, 2025 at 3:55 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:

(April 5, 2025 at 9:26 am)Order Wrote: I will prove the existence of God to you in a way you have probably never heard before [...]

I took the bait and had a PM exchange with him. Without revealing the actual contents of the PMs (because it’s a rule violation), suffice it to say he bailed because I didn’t give him the answers he was fishing for. He seemed so confident, but a small dose of determinism stumped him.

Boru

(April 5, 2025 at 4:06 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

(April 5, 2025 at 3:55 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:

I took the bait and had a PM exchange with him. Without revealing the actual contents of the PMs (because it’s a rule violation), suffice it to say he bailed because I didn’t give him the answers he was fishing for. He seemed so confident, but a small dose of determinism stumped him.

Boru

As soon as I saw the part about asking questions, I knew exactly what this was.

Do they actually believe this will work with people of even average intelligence?

(April 5, 2025 at 4:39 pm)The Valkyrie Wrote:

(April 5, 2025 at 4:06 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: I took the bait and had a PM exchange with him. Without revealing the actual contents of the PMs (because it’s a rule violation), suffice it to say he bailed because I didn’t give him the answers he was fishing for. He seemed so confident, but a small dose of determinism stumped him.

Boru

As soon as I saw the part about asking questions, I knew exactly what this was.

Do they actually believe this will work with people of even average intelligence?

Sadly, they do.

Boru

(April 5, 2025 at 2:22 pm)Drew_2013 Wrote:

(April 5, 2025 at 1:53 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: (Bold mine)

I disagree. I have no doubt that gods do not exist. I may be wrong, but I’m not uncertain.

Boru

I'm a theist but I'm not 100% sure. How can anyone be certain how a universe that caused intelligent life to exist was caused inadvertently by mindless natural forces? Do we 'know' such forces alone could do that? Do we know they did do that? Where does your certainty come from?

That's an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy, it is fallacious to argue that anything is true because we lack an alternative explanation. It is also an objective fact the the universe and natural processes exist, but there is no objective evidence any deity or anything supernatural exists, or that they're even possible.

(April 5, 2025 at 6:40 pm)Sheldon Wrote:

(April 5, 2025 at 2:22 pm)Drew_2013 Wrote: I'm a theist but I'm not 100% sure. How can anyone be certain how a universe that caused intelligent life to exist was caused inadvertently by mindless natural forces? Do we 'know' such forces alone could do that? Do we know they did do that? Where does your certainty come from?

That's an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy, it is fallacious to argue that anything is true because we lack an alternative explanation. It is also an objective fact the the universe and natural processes exist, but there is no objective evidence any deity or anything supernatural exists, or that they're even possible.

One possible explanation for the apparent biofriendliness of the universe is anthropogenic multiverse cosmology.  Another is quantum cosmology, which Stephen Hawking developed because he wasn't happy with the multiverse idea.  "We learn from quantum cosmology that biological evolution and cosmological evolution aren't fundamentally separate phenomena but two vastly different levels of one giant evolutionary tree." -- quoted from On the Origin of Time: Stephen Hawking's Final Theory (page 259) by his associate Thomas Hertog.  In ways I cannot personally understand, quantum entanglement can create a holographic universe in which biofriendliness is an evolved characteristic.  But this is really a hypothesis rather than a theory at this point.

Quantum cosmology does not require the complexity of a whole other spiritual level to reality which theists prefer.  Their own hypothesis is anything but economical, since as you pointed out it goes so far beyond anything observable. So again, theists prefer God-of-the-gaps arguments, regardless of how unlikely they are in the face of what we already know about the universe.

(April 5, 2025 at 3:03 pm)Drew_2013 Wrote:

(April 5, 2025 at 1:47 pm)Alan V Wrote: Atheists usually say that what theists take as evidence is better explained as evidence supporting atheism.

I have yet to hear these explanations.

I can recommend the book God: The Failed Hypothesis by philosopher and physicist Victor Stenger.

(April 5, 2025 at 3:03 pm)Drew_2013 Wrote:

(April 5, 2025 at 1:47 pm)Alan V Wrote: Atheists usually say that what theists take as evidence is better explained as evidence supporting atheism.

I have yet to hear these explanations. Take the existence of the universe that caused stars, planets, solar system, galaxies, and a planet like earth and to cause intelligent life to exist. I think it occurred because right from the start it was headed in the direction of a planet like earth existing. We know now that is far from a sure fire given.

 I think you have.  You've just chosen to ignore them because it's uncomfortable.

(April 5, 2025 at 8:27 pm)Nay_Sayer Wrote:

(April 5, 2025 at 3:03 pm)Drew_2013 Wrote: I have yet to hear these explanations. Take the existence of the universe that caused stars, planets, solar system, galaxies, and a planet like earth and to cause intelligent life to exist. I think it occurred because right from the start it was headed in the direction of a planet like earth existing. We know now that is far from a sure fire given.

 I think you have.  You've just chosen to ignore them because it's uncomfortable.

It is peculiar that with a certain type of theist, nothing seems to register even as mere information.