Why Something Rather Than Nothing?

[Ben Davis]

The choice between the forms (essences) of the universe to be created was either random or intelligent.

You're obviously a big fan of the false dichotomy. There's an obvious 3rd alternative: Non-random & unintelligent i.e. our universe could be emergent from a set of fundamental or extra-universal naturalistic functions with no intelligent intervention required. Given your (questionable) definitions we could also suggest 'intelligent & random' (e.g. a designer 'flips a coin' to determine universal attributes) or 'intelligent & non-random but naturalistic' (e.g. a designer uses a model based on existent naturalistic functions to generate a design).

You really need to abandon this theological apology. It is fundamentally untenable.

[Chas]

No, it doesn't. That makes no sense on any level.

Sure it does.

Suppose you are tasked with opening a safe whose combination is unknown to you. Employing a strategy of trying random combinations until you get the right one will succeed. Randomness will solve the problem.

In the broadest sense, intelligence is the ability to navigate a reality. A being which tries random paths until it gets the right one navigates reality....it is able to deal with a novel situation...it is in a small sense...intelligent.

Understanding what intelligence is helps us to understand something about God. DATC if you read this post, consider the following argument.

Premise 1. Intelligence is the ability to navigate a reality.
Premise 2. In order to navigate a reality, that reality must exist.
Premise 3. God is and always has been intelligent.
Conclusion: Therefore God has always existed in a reality.

What does it say about the nature of God?

Randomness requires no intelligence. Your argument is stupid on every level.

[Esquilax]

Premise 1. Intelligence is the ability to navigate a reality.
Premise 2. In order to navigate a reality, that reality must exist.
Premise 3. God is and always has been intelligent.
Conclusion: Therefore God has always existed in a reality.

What does it say about the nature of God?

I reject your ad hoc first premise, which was clearly formulated like this in order to reach the conclusion you already had in mind. You don't get to toy around with definitions so that words mean what you want them to; unintelligent creatures navigate reality just as easily as intelligent ones, and therefore your definition is useless.

Additionally, even taking your argument seriously from the start, premise three is entirely undemonstrated, and the conclusion you draw from it unearned. You might as well have just gone with: "Premise 3: I demand that god exists and is intelligent."

[Mister Agenda]

The truest kind of knowledge is the knowledge of that which one makes up. You must not doubt datc's knowledge of God, because it is the truest kind.

How can you call yourselves atheists, if you don't even know what it is whose existence you are denying?

First thing that comes up when I Google 'definition of atheist':

a·the·ist/ˈāTHēəst/
noun
a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods.

Nothing in there about denying. How are we supposed to believe in something if we not only don't know it exists, but don't know what it's supposed to be? YOU propose your particular God out of the potential infinity of imaginable Gods, and then we evaluate your claim. If your claim is strong, it will be persuasive. Complaining that we're jumping the gun by not believing in your God before you explain it is mere whining.

Before you can say "God does not exist," you must at least know what the word "God" means.

God/ɡäd/
noun
1.(in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being.
2.(in certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity

If your God is not that, it's not our fault you've made up your own definition. And by the way, those of us who say 'God does not exist' are a minority around here. I'm sure that Yahweh as outlined in the Bible doesn't exist, it's ridiculous, but you're apparently talking about your own personal conception of God, and its status is, so far: an unsupported contention.

That God is pure actuality is a proposition so basic and so far-reaching in natural theology that anyone with the remotest acquaintance with the concept of God would recognize it instantly.

It's not basic or far-reaching, it's just what's left when you pare everything off God that is demonstrably nonsense. What's left is an unfalsifiable vagueness that can't be disproven, yet is also completely uncompelling. And there is still no evidence that it's real. But at least you can say it's not a married bachelor.

Since, of course, you have no idea what "pure act" means, either, you cannot deny that God is pure act.

And I am not here to babysit you.

Apparently you're here to masturbate in our general direction.

Tell to the evolutionary process which, as some people have boldly asserted, has been able to solve a vast number of problems of building highly complex biomechanical systems in cells, organs, and the entire human body, with the help of trial-and-error random mutations (and natural selection).

Yes, but it didn't do it by thinking. It's just a natural algorithm. There's no more intelligence involved than it takes for water to flow downhill.

Even a blind watchmaker has some IQ.

Blind watchmakers have brains. Evolution is both eyeless and brainless.

---

This reminds me of my first exposure to an Orthodox Christian. I had an Orthodox Christian professor teaching Intro to Religion. He made a lot of arguments for God. I started the class thinking of myself as an agnostic. The same semester I was taking Logic 201 and learning about fallacies and the burden of proof. At some point in the semester, I realized I was an atheist. Not from some mean old atheist professor tearing down religion, but from a religious one, obviously intelligent and learned, who inadvertently revealed that there is not a single argument for the existence of God that stands up to reasonable scrutiny. Sometimes I think apologetics is one of the most potent 'atheist-making' tools in existence.

[Exian]

Premise 1. Intelligence is the ability to navigate a reality.
Premise 2. In order to navigate a reality, that reality must exist.
Premise 3. God is and always has been intelligent.
Conclusion: Therefore God has always existed in a reality.

What does it say about the nature of God?

This version of God is limited. Omniscience and omnipresence are gone. Without those, god cannot be omnipotent, so that's gone as well.

[datc]

How can you call yourselves atheists, if you don't even know what it is whose existence you are denying?

First thing that comes up when I Google 'definition of atheist':

a·the·ist/ˈāTHēəst/
noun
a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods.

Nothing in there about denying. How are we supposed to believe in something if we not only don't know it exists, but don't know what it's supposed to be? YOU propose your particular God out of the potential infinity of imaginable Gods, and then we evaluate your claim.

Suppose a certain Smith approaches you and tells you that by "God" he means "dog." Would you still disbelieve in the existence of Smith's god?

And if not, then you are no longer an atheist, because you now believe in the existence of at least one god.

---

If you observed as much as you talked, you would note that I do not identify as an atheist, but rather as a pure agnostic.

Before you can say "God does not exist," you must at least know what the word "God" means.

Did I ever say this? Are you talking to me, or to the voices in your head?

I said that your conception of God as maximally good, and of the universe as a deliberate creation by a good god, are nonsense, because only a fool would consider our universe maximally good. I'm pretty sure I never said "God does not exist."

That's a start, but in order to say "I don't know if God exists," you still need to understand the meaning of the term "God." If you think the Christian conception of God has no reference, yet still remain an agnostic, then you need at least one different conception of God of whose existence you are unsure.

[Exian]

Datc, why are you calling what you have described "God"?

[Heywood]

The choice between the forms (essences) of the universe to be created was either random or intelligent.

You're obviously a big fan of the false dichotomy. There's an obvious 3rd alternative: Non-random & unintelligent i.e. our universe could be emergent from a set of fundamental or extra-universal naturalistic functions with no intelligent intervention required. Given your (questionable) definitions we could also suggest 'intelligent & random' (e.g. a designer 'flips a coin' to determine universal attributes) or 'intelligent & non-random but naturalistic' (e.g. a designer uses a model based on existent naturalistic functions to generate a design).

You really need to abandon this theological apology. It is fundamentally untenable.

Your third alternative is easily dismissible on the basis that there is no reason to believe it to be true(other than to maintain an atheistic world view) and good reason to believe it isn't.

Yes there could be some magical, unobservable, or unknowable brute fact that dictates the universe is the way it is because it can only be the way it is . However, our current understanding of cosmology allows for more coherent models of the universe than you can count. Sting theory alone allows for at least 10^500 different ways the universe could be.

Your third alternative could be right, but the current physics say it aint.

[Anomalocaris]

Bullshit. Anything for which even trivial evidence is lacking can be trivially dismissed.

The difference between morons who impede progress, knowledge and understanding, and those who further all three is this:

Those who further progress knowledge and understanding don't assume anything that is not supported by evidence is meaningfully different from total bullshit, and recognize the worst possible bet is the bet on the chance that total bullshit happen to be true.

The morons believe the truth is what they think it is and evidence is a nice to have but totally dispensible prop, and things for which no evidence exists whatsoever still aquire a meningful probability of being true, sufficient for farty discussion if not a whole lot more, by virtue being wished to be true by morons.

[Heywood]

Premise 1. Intelligence is the ability to navigate a reality.
Premise 2. In order to navigate a reality, that reality must exist.
Premise 3. God is and always has been intelligent.
Conclusion: Therefore God has always existed in a reality.

What does it say about the nature of God?

I reject your ad hoc first premise, which was clearly formulated like this in order to reach the conclusion you already had in mind. You don't get to toy around with definitions so that words mean what you want them to; unintelligent creatures navigate reality just as easily as intelligent ones, and therefore your definition is useless.

Additionally, even taking your argument seriously from the start, premise three is entirely undemonstrated, and the conclusion you draw from it unearned. You might as well have just gone with: "Premise 3: I demand that god exists and is intelligent."

Do you think theists like the conclusion that God existing outside a reality is nonsense? Do you really think that?