Proof that God exists

[Agnosty]

I believe laws are observed regularities and we inherited our science terminology from theology where a creator issued laws that nature obeyed; now we have the laws of thermodynamics as if nature must obey them rather than merely that we have observed some regularities in nature.  

Who's this "we" business?

LOL good catch!  I may have conflated two we's.  When I said "we inherited our science terminology from theology", I meant the scientific and academic community.  When I said "now we have the laws of thermodynamics as if nature must obey them", I meant the community of people trying to learn while depending on the academic community to display information without surreptitiously conveying a meaning that wasn't intended (or shouldn't be intended.)  The physicist may know that laws aren't really laws, but the plain ole autodidact won't know until someone tells him.... like what happened to me when I tried to use the law of conservation of energy to show the universe can't be infinite and was informed the law isn't really a law.  I was thinking, "Well I knew that, but didn't know YOU knew that    "  

I believe the "law" terminology promotes an erroneous way of thinking: rather than dismiss an idea because it broke a law, we'd dismiss it because it's inconsistent with what we've regularly observed to be true; that way we can first decide if the regularities are local to us or universal and weigh the competing evidence without feeling monarchical.

It's a valid concern (but mostly because of what I would call user error or ignorance), a common failure or feature of language is that we use one word to convey more than just one singular concept.  Not for nothing, but dismissing something because it runs afoul of natural law and dismissing something because it's inconsistent with what we regularly observe are two ways of saying the same thing.  That -is- what "we" are doing.  There's no "rather" there, only semantics. 

I think there is a difference:

We can't say entropy reverses because a law says so.
We can't say entropy reverses because it's inconsistent with what we've always seen.

One is appeal to authority and the other is appeal to evidence.  If there is evidence saying what we've always seen will always be what we see, then what is that evidence?  Until that evidence arises, it seems to be an error to assume.

We understand that when a person says "car" - they aren't referring to a chariot, even though that's what we assume the word to be derived from.

Good point about etymology, but the meaning of "law" hasn't changed in the way "car" has, which was kinda my point... that we inherited "law" from theology and the original meaning persists to this day.  A law implies some authority to enforce it.

I have a bit of a theist lean mainly because I have trouble believing that a bunch of junk could assimilate by means of a dumb, mechanical process into the writer of this post, but I've rejected the idea of a monarchical deity barking orders because it doesn't make any sense.

Is there some reason that you think an "atheist lean" would imply what you have trouble believing?  I can provide some comfort there - no one thinks that a dumb, mechanical process assimilated a bunch of junk into you.  

That's not how babies are born.  

You know what I mean, silly.  A funny quip from a creationist goes, "Hydrogen - a colorless, odorless gas that, given enough time, turns into people.  "  Isn't that what the atheist believes?  Apparently that's what the creationists think the atheists believes, but I'm not atheist, so I can only guess at what they believe.  I don't want to step on any toes and I know that atheist are sensitive to misconceptions about what it means to be atheist, but I have to generalize the group in some way.

My assumptions of atheist beliefs are:

The universe is not teleological, meaning processes do not aim for a goal, but just happen.  What exists, exist by a natural selection from a realm of possibilities which requires no conscious guidance.  So it would seem that life exists as a consequence of complexity that just happened within enormous quantities of matter and time.  The shear quantity of stuff, time, and complexity is mindboggling enough to make it seem plausible even though the exact mechanism isn't readily apparent.  To me, it doesn't seem much different from substituting the stuff, time, complexity with god... only one is a peeping tom and the other isn't lol.

Some folks like to employ infinity as an explanation of the universe and since no one can properly get their head around infinity, no one can present much refute and therefore the concept of infinity replaces the placeholder of "the creator".  The flip side is the theist who uses quantum mechanics to show god, "god exists because quantum stuff!"  Anytime something is too complicated to imagine, people flock to it as an explanation for things.

I'm currently considering the eastern line of thinking and find it's well-aligned with the goals of the atheist community (in fact, most buddhists could be considered atheists. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatta  But I'm not buddhist.).  I'm also a fan of Christopher Hitchens and I'm pretty sure I've placed some wear n tear on youtube's servers with some bouts of obsessive listening (what a wordsmith he was).  Anyway, I say that because I hope you won't view me as an enemy, even though we may disagree on trivial points.

Beware the ad copy of eastern spiritualism.

What's that?

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I find much of what you've written encouraging.  I suspect we'll have plenty of common ground semantically from the look of it.  But it is late and I've got to get to sleep now.  I'm babysitting my niece and nephew through tomorrow night so I don't know when I will be back to this but I hope not to forget to do so.  If I do, please don't hesitate to give this post a bump or PM me then.

Enjoy time with your family and please don't feel obligated to this.  It's just conversation

From a quick skim it looks like you agree that if a god there be it will need to work within natural law, that it doesn't decide natural law in any arbitrary way and if indeed 'god' has created anything it was as a clever craftsperson, not a magic man.

 

I'm not sure I would say craftsperson nor magician, but more like someone who did something without knowing how... like how we beat our hearts.  We do it, but have no idea how to explain it.  It's not something that is thought about... like how a centipede walks without tangling all those legs.  That's the idea that is meant to be conveyed by the hindu pictures of gods with many arms.  Bruce Lee said we learn to forget, which means we train until the movement is reflexive and isn't thought about.  That way when we approach an opponent, we flow like water rather than thinking about how to counter.

Maybe I should stop trying to explain something I don't even understand, but that's kinda how I think about it.  It isn't magical like a magician poofing something from nothing, but it grows mindlessly like a plant.  Isn't it amazing to put a seed in the ground and have a plant start growing?  How does it know what to do?

Supernatural as not yet understood natural - good.

 

Yup

Also, great that you are able to cop to agnosticism as someone with a theistic bent, it will be your salvation.  

Lao Tzu said, "Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know."  Yet he said that  I don't know, so I talk a lot :p

“The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe.” - David Hare