Proof of God

[bennyboy]

Why are we believe that the bolded premise is true? The fact that we have localized cases of unintelligent beings producing order effects counts for something, since we can't just assume god or not god from the start without begging the question.

I'm not so sure. I think in the passage you quoted, "intelligence" means something like "sentience" or "awareness," not so much having a human capacity.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Summa Theological, fifth way I.e. final cause.

The fifth way is Aquinus trying to sneak intelligence into natural laws. The natural laws are a byproduct of symmetries. For example, translation invariance (this spot over here is no different than that spot over there) -> conservation of momentum. No intelligence is required for the conservation laws to exist.

The legal metaphor of natural laws is based on the idea of a law giver. It is appropriate to ask why such laws consistently hold true. The typical atheist answer is that they just do. The more curious and critical response by believers is that there is a cause for each observable fact. This is known as the principle of sufficient reason.

[robvalue]

1. If we were designed by an amazing intelligence, there would be no need for us to crap everywhere.

2. We crap everywhere.

3. We are not designed by an amazing intelligence.

[pocaracas]

The legal metaphor of natural laws is based on the idea of a law giver.

huh?!

It is appropriate to ask why such laws consistently hold true. The typical atheist answer is that they just do. The more curious and critical response by believers is that there is a cause for each observable fact. This is known as the principle of sufficient reason.

Why shouldn't those laws hold true, absent of such a "cause"?
I'd guess that a cause would be required to keep changing the laws... that they seem immutable is a testimony to the absence of such a "cause".

[Chas]

The fifth way is Aquinus trying to sneak intelligence into natural laws. The natural laws are a byproduct of symmetries. For example, translation invariance (this spot over here is no different than that spot over there) -> conservation of momentum. No intelligence is required for the conservation laws to exist.

The legal metaphor of natural laws is based on the idea of a law giver. It is appropriate to ask why such laws consistently hold true. The typical atheist answer is that they just do. The more curious and critical response by believers is that there is a cause for each observable fact. This is known as the principle of sufficient reason.

The 'laws' are human-made descriptions of our experience with reality.  The legal metaphor is not apt as there is no law-giver.

[Neo-Scholastic]

The legal metaphor of natural laws is based on the idea of a law giver.

huh?!

It is appropriate to ask why such laws consistently hold true. The typical atheist answer is that they just do. The more curious and critical response by believers is that there is a cause for each observable fact. This is known as the principle of sufficient reason.

Why shouldn't those laws hold true, absent of such a "cause"?
I'd guess that a cause would be required to keep changing the laws... that they seem immutable is a testimony to the absence of such a "cause".

In fairness to Aquinas, he did not have available to him some of the come philosophical terms used today. This leads to a simplistic dismissal of the fifth way. Were he alive today I believe he would have specifically identified intention as the mental property responsible for the consistent relationship between causes and effects. The notion here is that sensible bodies have dispositional properties (potential final ends) such that in the presence of certain efficient causes their actions are directed toward certain final ends. So to answer your question, the physical universe as a whole and each part within it displays various theologies, otherwise it would be absurd. My point is that some principle links causes to their effects, rather than no reason at all. For example, it is natural for the curious person to wonder why a billiard ball moves in a specific direction in response to the action of the cue. At a macro level, this can be explained by vector sums and mechanical forces. At deeper levels the inquiry turns into the interaction of atoms, etc. If you carry this process down to the Plank (sp) scale physical explanations no longer apply. Yet at every level anyone can witness the influence of teleology.

[Cyberman]

The dreadful misinterpretation of natural, physical laws into a legal sense requiring a lawgiver is as idiotic as saying that bolts tying together structural supports cannot be fastened by nuts, because I cannot eat them.

[Pizza]

Why are we believe that the bolded premise is true? The fact that we have localized cases of unintelligent beings producing order effects counts for something, since we can't just assume god or not god from the start without begging the question.

I'm not so sure.  I think in the passage you quoted, "intelligence" means something like "sentience" or "awareness," not so much having a human capacity.

I mean unintelligent things like trees producing seeds and not cars. I'm more annoyed by how when theists take this line of reasoning that they fail to prove that only a sentience thing can do this or that. If this was ancient times they would be claiming that the rain is caused by a rain god.  Notice how Chad straw-manned what I asked. I'm okay with there being a "sufficient reason" but he never gives a non-question begging for we are to think he knows what the reason is and that that reason is mind, and then if mind not the mind of human observers. He rules out an atheistic immaterialism without argument. 

[Neo-Scholastic]

The dreadful misinterpretation of natural, physical laws into a legal sense requiring a lawgiver is as idiotic as saying that bolts tying together structural supports cannot be fastened by nuts, because I cannot eat them.

That is actually my point. The history of science starts with the presumption that the world is intelligibly ordered. Using the term 'laws' to describe the immutable relationship between efficient causes and their effects was an intentional reference to a Divine Lawgiver. Rupert Sheldrake suggests, and I agree, that it would be more accurate to describe empirically observed relationships as habits, dispositions, or correspondences.

[LostLocke]

The history of science starts with the presumption that the world is intelligibly ordered.

No, actually it does not.