This is one of the strongest arguments I've found for against the existence of God and is largely based on the work of Paul Almond and his research into hypotheses and information complexity, the basic idea is that the better hypothesis of competing hypotheses (and subsequently the one that should be believed) is the one that contains the least amount of information, the more information that exists in the hypothesis the lower the chances of that hypothesis being true relative to the more simple alternatives (this can also be demonstrated in Beysian terms).
This argument uses the complexity required at what you could call t0, the first state of affairs in existence (or some alternative infinite regression) and examines what is demanded to exist in two contexts, a theistic one and a naturalistic one.
For this post I'm only focusing on deities who are defined as being Omniscient (All knowing) as this single attribute alone is enough to determine that the existence of a deity at t0 is less likely than proposed naturalist alternatives.
The alternative hypothesis to consider for this comparison is one common to many natural theories of the origin of the universe, that of Quantum fluctuations (an effect that has been demonstrated time and time gain) changing the net energy of existence (Re: Lawrence Krauss, the net energy of the universe (or all things proposed) is equal to 0) in such a way as to cause an isolated region of spatial expansion. The information needed for this hypothesis is simply the existence of energy, the potential for instability (the fluctuation), and a feedback loop that, similarly to an algorithm, generates great and varied orders of complexity over time.
This argument does not suppose that either hypothesis is true, so don't look to this as some argument for the universe being caused by Quantum Fluctuations (that is another debate entirely), it is simply intended to demonstrate that the most common naturalist hypothesis for the origins of the universe is a great deal more likely than a hypothesis containing an omniscient deity.
Essentially, An omniscient deity is a being who knows everything that will ever happen in any given state of affairs throughout any sequence (and even worse, but not needed for this argument, any possible state of affairs in any possible sequence) - Given the nature of our universe even at the most reductionist level this deity knows (or to the extent it is possible to know for 'indeterminate deities') the position and momentum of every particle in the universe at every moment of time throughout existence.
For a deity to know the entirety of this reductionist picture of reality alone requires that inside the mind of the deity there is some mental map or meaningful collection of data that the deity has full access to in having awareness and knowledge about the state of affairs at every moment in existence, this is something that would be true with or without a material theory of mind.
It should be rather plain to see that the amount of information required to describe this reductionist picture alone is greatly more than needed to describe the event proposed by naturalists, thus in terms of the probability of the two origins hypotheses the naturalistic one is more likely to be true, thus we have more reason to believe the universe came about by some natural mechanism as opposed to the intervention of a deity.
This argument uses the complexity required at what you could call t0, the first state of affairs in existence (or some alternative infinite regression) and examines what is demanded to exist in two contexts, a theistic one and a naturalistic one.
For this post I'm only focusing on deities who are defined as being Omniscient (All knowing) as this single attribute alone is enough to determine that the existence of a deity at t0 is less likely than proposed naturalist alternatives.
The alternative hypothesis to consider for this comparison is one common to many natural theories of the origin of the universe, that of Quantum fluctuations (an effect that has been demonstrated time and time gain) changing the net energy of existence (Re: Lawrence Krauss, the net energy of the universe (or all things proposed) is equal to 0) in such a way as to cause an isolated region of spatial expansion. The information needed for this hypothesis is simply the existence of energy, the potential for instability (the fluctuation), and a feedback loop that, similarly to an algorithm, generates great and varied orders of complexity over time.
This argument does not suppose that either hypothesis is true, so don't look to this as some argument for the universe being caused by Quantum Fluctuations (that is another debate entirely), it is simply intended to demonstrate that the most common naturalist hypothesis for the origins of the universe is a great deal more likely than a hypothesis containing an omniscient deity.
Essentially, An omniscient deity is a being who knows everything that will ever happen in any given state of affairs throughout any sequence (and even worse, but not needed for this argument, any possible state of affairs in any possible sequence) - Given the nature of our universe even at the most reductionist level this deity knows (or to the extent it is possible to know for 'indeterminate deities') the position and momentum of every particle in the universe at every moment of time throughout existence.
For a deity to know the entirety of this reductionist picture of reality alone requires that inside the mind of the deity there is some mental map or meaningful collection of data that the deity has full access to in having awareness and knowledge about the state of affairs at every moment in existence, this is something that would be true with or without a material theory of mind.
It should be rather plain to see that the amount of information required to describe this reductionist picture alone is greatly more than needed to describe the event proposed by naturalists, thus in terms of the probability of the two origins hypotheses the naturalistic one is more likely to be true, thus we have more reason to believe the universe came about by some natural mechanism as opposed to the intervention of a deity.
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