Proof that God exists

[Agnosty]

That's how we learn.

Yup, that's how we learn and I'm happy to meet someone who is also interested in learning about this.  

Entropy can and does decrease on a local scale, at the expense of an overall increase in the total entropy in the closed system of the Universe.

That's the statement I'm having trouble with.  It seems to be saying that order causes more disorder than if the order had not occurred.  Can you describe a mechanism by which that happens?  Can you provide an example or analogy to help convey your understanding that enables you to believe that is true?

Our local star system is not a closed system; our sun provides more than enough energy for life to arise and flourish, as it were combatting entropy, at the cost of depleting its own energy.

Well if it's not a closed system and energy is allowed to dissipate into other systems, then I can see the solar system fizzling-out, but it's not because of the existence of life since solar systems that do not have life will also dissipate; maybe marginally faster since life isn't bottlenecking the process.

But every action lifeforms take, even thinking, dissipates into heat energy and, on a relatively microscopic level, furthers the heat death of the Universe.

Plants store energy from the sun, we eat the plants, release the energy, type some words, and send the heat back on its journey to the far-reaches of the universe.  We're just a pitstop.  I don't see how we added more heat, yet we did add the organization.  I'm still unclear on how life adds entropy.

I could concede that the entropy of the universe is increasing in spite of life's efforts to reduce it, but I don't yet see how life adds more entropy.  I'm not saying it's not true, but that the mechanism hasn't been described for a very unintuitive process.  

Remember also that I am not an astrophysicist

If you don't understand it either, then why do you believe what you said?

The Earth going around the Sun isn't very intuitive either. Intuition is a great way to be wrong and still remain blissful about it.

The heliocentric model is intuitive to me, but only because I have the benefit of knowing just how big the sun is and how gravity works.  For those reasons, it makes sense that the big thing would be in the center and therefore it's intuitive.  Maybe if I had existed 1000 yrs ago, my intuition would have been different since my knowledge would have been more limited.

So intuition is a function of knowledge and probably causes confirmation bias in that everyone seeks to validate what they suspect; sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

Reductio ad absurdum doesn't get you very far, either.

It's not reductio because I didn't try to prove anything, but instead I said it's hard for me to picture the premise being true and I requested help for a better understanding so that I can indeed picture it.  It wasn't an argument, but request with elaboration on my current perspective.

Neither does grafting a non sequitur onto a red herring.

Thanks!  A kipper snack sounds good

We're not talking about autonomic control of our bodies, we were discussing gods.

Yes, but if you can't understand the natural (our bodies), how can you ask for an explanation of the supernatural (god)?  If you don't know arithmetic, how can you ask about calculus?  You're asking for something that couldn't possibly be explained until you've understood the remedial, which I think is impossible (just my opinion).

If you want to suggest that the two things are similar, be my guest. Just bear in mind that you then forfeit all option to claim a supernatural god.

I'm not sure if they are similar or even the same.  Supernatural just means a part of the natural that we can't or haven't detected or understood because if the supernatural exists, then it is a natural part of what there is.  It's similar to humans believing what they do is somehow artificial.  The distinction between artificial, natural, and supernatural is an artificial distinction

It's more than reasonable - it's required, since you are positing the existence of such an entity operating in such a way. Yours is the onus to support the assertion.

I'm not positing anything but the inability to explain how god operates is irrelevant to concluding whether or not god exists; it's fairly innocent.

Maybe. How do you suggest we set about validating that inference?

Dark matter or god?  Either way, I have no idea.  EM radiation travels right through dark matter with no interaction (except the gravitational effects between light and mass, which is exceedingly tiny and probably undetectable).  I don't know how god would interact.

I suspect you don't understand the significance of inference in a scientific context. Hint: it doesn't mean making stuff up and leaving it at that.

What I meant was we've been inferring the existence of god to explain things that were explained less mystically later on and I meant it to imply that we should always be on our guard when god is the answer to difficult questions lest we repeat history.