Quote:I don't think that the evidence is on faith alone simply because the precise way that something is done by God is not explained. For ID arguments, the idea anyway is that the inference to an intelligent designer would be similar to the way one could find machinery on the moon an conclude it was left by intelligent beings. It would not be necessary to know just how such beings created this machinery to conclude that it was not just a random creation from natural events.
I've heard numerous variations of this argument. The “inference” argument is illogical because it relies on circular reasoning. You're arguing that intelligence can be inferred from the fact that the machinery appears to be intelligently created. This is a tautology.
If in fact you were to find something on the moon that looked like it was designed by intelligence, I would have no way to confirm that, unless someone devised a testable hypothesis that explained how an intelligent mechanism was able to produce machinery on the moon. I could then positively derive the evidence from your hypothesis without relying solely on deductive reasoning. Without that hypothesis, any “explanation” that you came up with would just be a hunch.
By the way, there is a real life case study of this scenario. There’s a famous photograph taken by NASA from the orbit of Mars, which shows a human face on the Martian surface. Some people argue that this is evidence of intelligence on Mars, but we have no way to verify this “hunch” without an explanation of how an intelligent mechanism got to Mars to carve a human face on its surface. It's not good evidence for Martian intelligence.
Quote:I don't have much of a problem believing that God created life through evolution.
Ever hear of Occam's razor? It seems like you're just forcing God in to the equation, without any rational explanation for why God should be there.
Quote:There is also the impression I get from your post that you assert that what cannot be verified by empirical evidence or argument is irrational to believe.
Yes.
Quote:However, most philosophers are agreed that our most important and basic beliefs cannot be verified by evidence or argument. This includes things like basic logical truths...
It seems that there are rules that came with this universe when it was created. Logic is simply based on the rule that something can't be both true and false at the same time. We know that this rule is true from repeated experience. I'm not sure that I understand the arguments for the God of Christianity in the same way that I understand basic mathematical logic.
Quote:I likewise do not accept God of the gaps arguments. However, I don't believe that all arguments for God are like this, nor do I believe that people need arguments to know that God exists.
I understand that not all arguments for God fall in to the god-of-the-gaps fallacy. However, all arguments that I have heard for the existence of God so far have been illogical. I would love to hear an argument that wasn't.
