Proof that God exists

[Agnosty]

Didn't we just discuss, between us, that the term natural law is shorthand for "what we've always seen"?  The only authority being appealed to when someone mentions natural law is the authority of an overwhelming weight of observational evidence. 

I think people are likely to interpret "law" written in a textbook with the same connotation as they would "law" in any other context unless instructed otherwise.  The only reason this technicality arose for us to debate is the fact that I didn't know if my audience knew that law doesn't mean law.  Even if you assure me that you can make the mental substitution, that doesn't say anything about the other people who may have never given it any consideration.

As to the latter part, do you consider it to be an error to assume that a ball will roll down a ramp "just because" that's what it's always done?

Thanks for critiquing my logic... your point is interesting to contemplate.  What comes to mind first is how cats always run into the path of a car rather the opposite way.  It's a catastrophic strategy, so why did the cat successfully evolve it?  My point with that is: things aren't always intuitive and nature has to make some assumptions based on experience.  The assumption the cat makes is that the car is going to veer in its direction, therefore the cat should force the assailant to make a sharp turn rather than try to outrun it in the other direction.  It works with predators, but not with cars.

We can project this instinctual behavior on humans.  It seems likely the ball will continue on down the ramp in a straight path because that is our experience, but did we consider all the variables?  Perhaps a stone lie in the path which will cause the ball to head the direction we instinctively and intuitively choose for safety.

The universe is too complex to ever say we've considered all the variable to therefore declare a law.  There is no perfect strategy to cover all the possibilities and every strategy has a downside to be exploited by random chance.

You can cherry-pick instances to make a case one way while discarding instances that aren't so compelling, so it boils down to the strategy you'd prefer to adopt.  Myself, I like the fluidity of not making hardcore assumptions when contemplating the universe and other times I may take a more rigid approach, for instance, when ducking snowballs, I tend to assume a trajectory

Law derives from lagu, old english by way of norse - laid down or fixed. 

Fixed = written in stone, like the 10 commandments.

That's a more apt description of a natural law than car is as a chariot.  We didn't inherit this one from theology, and it doesn't imply an "authority to enforce" either conceptually or in point of fact.

That's a statement of authority, lol, because there is no offered rationale to support it.  All you've done is say I'm wrong.

We inherited "law" from theology because religion existed long before anything we could regard as science and is the most probable explanation for how "law" made it into our physics books.  Before the first law of science was ever written, we had been observing laws of god and community for centuries and by the time of Newton and Galileo, science and religion were a twisted mess.  Over the years, people retained the old terminological convention.

As a glaring example, Newton's second law of motion was wrong.  It works for small velocities, but higher up the scale it doesn't factor in the change in mass due to the increased velocity.  Most folks aren't privy and assume F=ma is written in stone (I did for many years and that includes all of college.  It wasn't until the internet that I learned Newton wasn't exactly right and further up in time until I started questioning laws of nature in general.)

In almost all cases, and certainly in the case of the common person, law implies an authority that enforces it.  If you ask an average person to name a law, they'll recite one of the 10 commandments or a law of the state and that just goes to show in what regard most people would view the meaning of law.

noun
1. the principles and regulations established in a community by some authority and applicable to its people, whether in the form of legislation or of custom and policies recognized and enforced by judicial decision.
2. any written or positive rule or collection of rules prescribed under the authority of the state or nation, as by the people in its constitution.
3. the controlling influence of such rules; the condition of society brought about by their observance:
4. a system or collection of such rules.
5. the department of knowledge concerned with these rules; jurisprudence:
to study law.
6. the body of such rules concerned with a particular subject or derived from a particular source:
commercial law.
7. an act of the supreme legislative body of a state or nation, as distinguished from the constitution.
8. the principles applied in the courts of common law, as distinguished from equity.
9. the profession that deals with law and legal procedure:
10. legal action; litigation:
11. a person, group, or agency acting officially to enforce the law:
12. any rule or injunction that must be obeyed:
13. a rule or principle of proper conduct sanctioned by conscience, concepts of natural justice, or the will of a deity:
14. a rule or manner of behavior that is instinctive or spontaneous:
15. a statement of a relation or sequence of phenomena invariable under the same conditions.
16. a principle based on the predictable consequences of an act, condition, etc.:
17. a rule, principle, or convention regarded as governing the structure or the relationship of an element in the structure of something, as of a language or work of art:
18. a commandment or a revelation from God.
19. (sometimes initial capital letter) a divinely appointed order or system.
20. the Law, Law of Moses.
21. the preceptive part of the Bible, especially of the New Testament, in contradistinction to its promises:
the law of Christ.
22. British Sports. an allowance of time or distance given a quarry or competitor in a race, as the head start given a fox before the hounds are set after it.

Much was cribbed in this way...here..amusingly, from one of the last pagan kingdoms of the middle ages - and a remarkably secular one to boot with respect to "law".  Germanic and/or norse law was kind of a thing of envy for early christers.  We didn't steal this one from god belief, god belief re-appropriated and, after enough time had passed, told yet another lie about it's origin.

That's fine... science got it from theology who got it from pagans.

Atheists don't believe in gods.  Stick with that.

That doesn't add much clarity.

You're conflating facts with "atheists beliefs" above, though.  What exists (by which I take it you mean life like yourself since that;s the question you've asked a variety of ways) -does- exist by natural selection..which doesn't require any conscious guidance...

Oh yes, natural selection!  I'm on board with that. I could even see natural selection selecting for the speed of light through a multiverse-whatever, but I cannot see it selecting for consciousness because if life is just chemical reactions then there is no need for a conscious observer and no natural-selective-mechanism to explain its existence.  If life is a series of if/then statements, then why do I need to supervise it?

even if there is any, as there is in artificial selection..which is also a thing that accounts for some of what exists as it it currently exists.

   
There is no such thing as artificial selection; humans are natural to the universe and any interference they produce is just what the natural universe is doing.

Evolutionary biology isn't some substitute for a god.  If there were a god, evolutionary biology would still be as accurate and effective as it is now.  We would still have to account for demonstrable truths about it and how it relates to us.

 
Let's suppose I'm a christian who believes in evolutionary biology and then I reject god and fill the space with evolutionary biology.
Now let's suppose I'm a christian who believes in creationism and then I reject god and... with what will I substitute?  Evolutionary biology because, without god, that's all there is.

EB doesn't have to be a substitute for god, but it often is.

That it -seems-.....partiularly to believers and demi-believers, to be a substitute is down to the fact that the people who told god stories spun blatant lies about our origins, and whose fault is that when their pattern of silly and pointless lying turns out to be wholly and hilariously wrong?

 
I see what you mean.

RE: eastern spiritualism
That it's any less silly or any better aligned with some western ideology x..or that, fundamentally, it's a different thing than western spiritualism.

The way I understand it, atheists and buddhists should be best buds.

(I'd really love to figure out what it is, specifically, you're having trouble with in biology - or the confluence of god and biology, I actually enjoy the opportunity to help believers reconcile their god with facts - even if I don't believe in their gods.

 
That's really cool of you to offer!

In my experience, when it can be pulled off, it's a productive and enjoyable experience.  Faith strengthening, even - just one less fact a person feels compelled to deny in maintaining their belief.  Let me help you take the load off? )

Yes, one of the reasons I am here is to get a perspective on how an atheist sees things.

My problem with biology is similar to this joke:  

God was once approached by a scientist who said, “Listen God, we’ve decided we don’t need you anymore. These days we can clone people, transplant organs and do all sorts of things that used to be considered miraculous.”
God replied, “Don’t need me huh? How about we put your theory to the test. Why don’t we have a competition to see who can make a human being, say, a male human being.”
The scientist agrees, so God declares they should do it like he did in the good old days when he created Adam.
“Fine” says the scientist as he bends down to scoop up a handful of dirt.”
“Whoa!” says God, shaking his head in disapproval. “Not so fast. You get your own dirt.”

Cute huh  

If you claim life comes from a bunch of junk, you still need to show the junk isn't contaminated with life.  Even if, one day, we could produce life in a test tube, that doesn't prove anything because my contention is that life will spontaneously arise anywhere in this universe... another planet, in sulfur lakes, volcanoes, or the bottom of test tubes and the fact that it happens that way settles nothing.  What you would have to do is create your own spacetime complete with gluon field, quarks, protons, neutrons, electrons, etc and have life result from a known sterile sample and then you could proclaim that life results from nonlife.  Essentially, you'd have to create your own dirt to be scientifically certain.

That realization came about after contemplating if I could take a seed to mars and expect it to grow in martian soil if I could provide the right atmosphere, then I quickly saw that the environment is codependent with the organism and they are two sides of the same coin.  And it's much deeper than that because the environment requires the whole universe and therefore the organism and universe are one inseparable thing.

An apple requires a tree which requires dirt which requires a planet which requires a solar system which requires a galaxy which requires a universe.  One measly apple requires a whole universe to produce and can never be a thing by itself.

So to string some atoms together in a lab and make life.... that just doesn't prove anything to me because whatever life is, it's inherent to the whole universe in a continuum and it isn't something that can be dissected out and examined anymore than you could remove the north pole of a magnet without also taking the south.