Small post Clarifying a common fallacy here.

[DD_8630]

Supply the evidence for that and I will consider it. Not the evidence for a creator, but that a creator can be less complex that created a universe and everything in it.

Surely the onus is on you to show that a Creator couldn't be less complex?

No it isn't. Whenever we look at something that has actually been designed or created, as opposed to something that has evolved over millions of years by natural selection or formed by billions of years in the universe, we always find that the designer is an incredibly complex being. We simply have no experience of anything that is known to have been designed except by a highly complex designer. So as evidence points to creations being created by entities more complex than the creation itself, until an exception to this comes along it is the standard. Can you think of an example where the creation is more complex than the creator?

No, and I don't believe one exists (on Earth, at least... ). Nevertheless, it is fallacious to use this evidence to conclude that all creators must be more complex than their creations. Ever heard of Popper's black swans?

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I agree Leo.

And if God isn't complex and for example he's something like the big bang singularity - then that's not really God now is it? And to use God as a metaphor for the big bang or some kind of very simple might be very confusing!

The creator of the universe is surely very complex indeed. Right from the start 'God' would have to be capable of designing it! And all its complexity! And unknowing it.

But why do those traits imply that God would have to be complex? Or, at least, more complex than it's creation?

I mean talk about how smart he would have to be. How big his brain (whatever its made out of).

And if he's just DEFINED outside of material and he can be really simple no matter what - then that of course is very unparsimonious and way too big an assumption to make. Its against parsimony to just go about postulating too many entities, as you are aware DD.

I think we're not too bother about how parsimonious God is at this point: simply having God at all is unparsimonious, regardless of his relative complexity.

But what you're talking about is the kind of what I think of when I try to imagine a Creator less complex than its creation: a kind of 'particle' that, while fully concious and omnipotent and stuff, is ultimately simple. Funky stuff.

I mean if the universe at the start is a very simple singularity. Then yeah, God could relatively be simple to CREATE something that is ALSO very simple I think.

But he'd still have to be a lot more complex and improbable relative to his creation - even if he's very simple because the universe started very simple and just expanded and developed from there I think.

Thoughts?

EvF

Can the universe become more complex of its own accord?

I think it might be prudent to define 'complex' at this point...

Negative entropy? Capacity to process information? Definitive structure (as opposed to homogeneous sludge)?