The absurd need for logical proofs for God

[Angrboda]

You have that exactly backwards - populations of organisms evolve biological processes to suit their environment (this is why the Negev Desert doesn’t have a population of polar bears).

What you’ve done is presumed that environments were deliberately designed to be fit for predetermined groups of organisms. That’s not how it works.

Formally, this is what you’ve done:

1. If God designed the universe, then human beings would exist.
2. Human beings exist.
3. Therefore, God designed the universe.

See the problem?

Boru

No,pal. The first premise is unsound, by the way. The second premise is unprovable in the atheist's worldview - only he, one human being, can say of himself he exists. I am afraid I will insist on the problem of other minds, since it clearly undermines the atheist's tendency to demand the kind of evidence for god he wouldn't demand in other situations of equal importance.

Ther agument actually goes like this:
1. One is certain other minds exists, despite the latter being subject to debate and cannot be formally proven.
2. It can be shown that the existence of God is based on the same analogy, however weak it is, that leads to the existence of other minds.
3. Therefore, if one rejects the existence of god, one rejects other minds. Otherwise, he will have a fundamentally dishonest position.

For the design part, it can be put this way:
1. We can see clear aspects of adaptation of means to end -i.e. design-, regardless of the process that led to it.
2. Design, as defined in 1., is more probably that not the product of a conscious, deliberate decision.
3. Therefore, our universe is more probably than not the design of a conscious agent.

I'm going to deal with this in reverse order because the main problem is that the latter argument, that the universe is likely designed because it looks designed is the main problem. I noted in an earlier definition you gave for design that you had expanded it to the point that it included things which, in the colloquial sense, did not actually exhibit design in the sense you were implying. Your definition also fit out-of-place artifacts which look like they were designed by an agent, but actually were the result of natural processes. This is the main obstacle in any design argument, defining design, and specifically what the indicators of design are, such that they don't yield false positives. William Dembski has written at length on the problem and is the foremost proponent of a framework which claims to be able to identify design. Unfortunately his work is terribly flawed and faulty. The result is that you can't establish premise #1 of your argument that there are clear aspects of design in the universe or in biological life forms, and if anything, the argument is much stronger in the case of biological life forms. In particular, if you are suggesting that fine-tuning of the universe is the aspect which leads to a conclusion of design, one's argument gets recast as:

1. The universe appears fine-tuned which would be clear evidence of design, regardless of the process which led to it.
2. Design, as previously defined, is more probably than not the product of conscious, deliberate decision.
3. It is not necessarily the case that the universe is fine-tuned, as the universe's constants could have happened by chance.
4. If the universe is not designed as in 3, then it would still appear fine-tuned.
5. Therefore the appearance of fine-tuning is not evidence of conscious, deliberate decision.

The main problem is that premise #1 is not true. With the failure of the design part of your argument, the prior main argument fails as well.

Now, as to the first, it's important to note that an argument based upon analogy is neither inductive nor deductive and largely functions as a pedagogical tool rather than an argument. The basis of an argument from analogy is that something displays similarity in aspects which it is known, therefore it's probable that said similarity extends to things that are unknown. This is not a reliable assumption. I can note that a car rests on four tires and argue from analogy that a three-legged stool likely has four legs because, after observing the first three legs, I conclude that the parallel between it and a car also having three points of rest also extends to it likewise having four points of rest, or four legs. In essence, an analogy depends upon a form of uniformitarianism in our assumptions which we have no justification for assuming. Thus it isn't probative of the probability of an analogical thing sharing a trait that hasn't yet been confirmed. Some do, some don't -- and there is no information present to determine which class the analogized object belongs to, so the argument, as such, does not lead to a definite conclusion. It's a non sequitur.

But there's a more important failing in the first argument. We posit the existence of other minds based upon an analogy between our own behavior, and that of other people because we know that we exist and have the ability to perform these behaviors. We know that we, as agents, are incapable of summoning universes into being, so even if the cause behind the universe is an agent, it is an agent wholly unlike us. Allow me to quote the relevant point from David Hume's Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, part 2:

The exact similarity of the cases gives us a perfect assurance of a similar outcome; and we never want or look for stronger evidence than that. But the evidence is less strong when the cases are less than perfectly alike; any reduction in similarity, however tiny, brings a corresponding reduction in the strength of the evidence; and as we move down that scale we may eventually reach a very weak analogy...

In your case, the analogy is so weak -- basically non-existent -- that one might be charitably inclined to agree that there appear indications of a mind behind the universe, there is little reason to suspect any mind behind it has the properties of a god rather than say aliens or a natural order which we are not yet cognizant of existing. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy makes this point in its argument from design article concerning a similar analogy, to that of Nicolas Caputo in an election in which cheating was involved. In the case of Caputo, we have an agent who possessed the capabilities to bring about the results that the inference of design in that case was based. In the case of other minds, we have an agent with confirmed similar capabilities. In the case of God, we have no such exemplar. If we don't know that things like gods are even possible, it makes no sense to conclude that they are probable based upon a design inference, as that would be a subtle form of begging the question, assuming the possible existence of God, to argue about the possible existence of God. In any argument there are primary premises, typically those presented, and auxiliary premises, most of which end up being unspoken. In the case of other minds, one primary premise is that minds, namely ours, which are capable of certain things, exist, at least one. That becomes an auxiliary premise in the design argument if one is arguing that there is an analogy there, and says that gods exist, or, at least, are possible. The fact of it being an auxiliary, unstated premise doesn't make it any less necessary to the conclusion for it being unspoken. And when that part of the analogy is brought out, it's clear that either one is begging the question (circularity), or one's analogy is a false one (gods aren't analogous to humans).