The Case for Theism

[LukeMC]

I haven't been on the boards in a while and I haven't read this thread in its entirety, but I feel like chiming in at this stage. Let me start at the end.

The theist claim is that the universe and the attendant laws of nature were not the result of some mindless process that fortuitously got it right but instead was the product of planning and design.

The universe didn't get it "right". There is no "right". The claim that sentient life is a goal, or even that it is desirable, is simply a human-centric manipulation of the story of the universe told from the perspective of humans being the center of all things valuable. The problem with your summary is that you suppose human value to be so high that a 13.7 billion year old, 47 billion light year radius universe had to be carefully designed to allow a few small critters on a rock to write poems and watch sunsets. We didn't "get lucky". We just happen to enjoy life and so now you're taking the position of defining the entire universe in terms of that fact.

Theists believe a personal agent known as God caused the universe and subsequently human existence. Atheists believe there is no God and therefore natural or non-God forces are responsible for our existence. The truth is no one knows the truth of the matter. Theism and atheism is an opinion about the source of our existence and the universe.

The origin of the universe is such an incalculably difficult subject to comprehend that neither of us can possibly hope to come up with a satisfactory answer. Theists claim that some intelligent force created it. I on the other hand cannot presume to have an opinion on this, and deem your claim to be as indefensible as any. I don't believe in a "naturalist" origin of the universe- I have no idea at all how the universe came about. And neither do you. This is why an atheist must call you out when you make a positive claim. It's not that I deny God in favour of a godless origin- I just cannot comment. If somebody was to say "the universe came about unintentionally and through random means" then this too would be overstepping the barrier of what we can reasonably posit.

It's a dodge my opponents employ so they can pretend they don't have a case to make or a burden to shoulder.

I don't. What, do you think I'm a genius physicist who has a plausible answer for the origin of the universe? This is very disingenuous. I truly and genuinely do not have an answer for the question of existence.

Assuming you believe the universe and humans exist and that our existence came about in some manner, if you don't believe a personal agent known as God caused and planned such an existence, then you do believe mindless mechanistic forces minus plan or intent caused our existence.

Either the universe is a product of intention or is not- of course you are right about this. Either claim is more than one can defend.

1. The fact the universe exists.

In contrast it's not necessary for the universe to exist to believe God doesn't exist, there is no condition necessary for atheism to be true. There is not one piece of evidence or condition that needs to be true to claim God doesn't exist. There are conditions necessary for us to have evidentiary reasons to believe God exists.

You seem to contradict yourself here by saying that no evidence is necessary for atheism to be true. This means that atheism is not a claim based on evidence, but rather it rests on the lack of evidence for a creative agent- this is precisely what you argued against earlier in your post.

2. The fact life exists

If the claim atheism is true, neither life or the conditions necessary for life came about by plan or design. Whatever forces and conditions that caused life to exist didn't intend for it to happen. To the best of our knowledge only sentient beings can purposely plan and design something to happen. Therefore the existence of life is at best the unintended by product of mindless forces that neither intended life to exist or for that matter the conditions that allow life to exist.

Yes. Or rather, there is no reason to argue that a creative agent masterminded what we see.

More over if the atheist narrative is correct, lifeless mindless forces caused something totally unlike itself to exist...Life.

This is no more interesting than steam ,a gas, coming from ice which, being a solid, is quite unlike steam. The properties of organic molecules are no different to the properties of dead matter. They just happen to behave in a way that we recognize and call "life". Again, you're being human-centric and giving undue treatment to a phenomena simply because you personally value it.

Just as a God in the gap argument is to insert the explanation of God where there is a gap in our knowledge, a naturalism in the gaps argument is to assume a naturalist explanation in the gaps of our knowledge.

This is purely ridiculous. God of the gaps is the claim that because scientists cannot explain a phenomenon, god must exist and must be the answer to the puzzle. A basic study of scientific history will shed light on the God of the gaps legacy. The "atheist" take on the matter would be to make no claim at all but rather investigate the situation empirically until suitable evidence is found. To claim that this "assumes naturalism" is a nonsensical statement. Anything that can be tested and observed is by definition "natural" and so of course we expect that when we investigate a situation, we will find a "natural" answer. This has nothing at all to do with a creative agent.

They claim that life began by some natural unguided unintended process but since we don't know what that process is...insert naturalism in the gaps. They assume some natural unguided process is responsible for the universe to come into existence but since we don't know what that process is insert naturalism in the gaps.

No. Investigate the gaps.

There are several reasons atheists can spot a god in the gaps argument but have a blind spot when it comes to naturalism in the gaps arguments. Since they 'know' God doesn't exist some naturalistic explanation must be true and therefore a naturalism in the gaps explanation is justified.

We expect an explanation to exist and so we investigate to uncover an explanation. This only assumes that the universe is investigable. God of the gaps on the other hand undermines investigation by claiming that the answer is not knowable and cannot be discovered, and that therefore it must have happened supernaturally. You are therefore being incredibly deceptive in attempting to equate the two positions as essentially the same thing.

One last factor, as of this writing the only known, observable repeatable method of causing life is through procreation. It is an indisputable fact that life comes from life. This is important because my opponents claim they are lead to their conclusions on a factual basis.

It is indisputable that complex lifeforms replicate. The origin of lifeforms was not even remotely similar to the way that lifeforms exist now. They were much, much simpler, and to draw the line between "life" and "matter" doesn't make much sense at such a level. This is true whether you believe in a god or not- it is certain than there were only chemicals and then one day there were self-replicating chemicals. The mechanics of self-replication are quite complex, sure, but they are not mystical, and very intelligent people are currently spending a lot of their time and energy figuring out how exactly the transition occurred, what the climate was like, and factoring in all of the other circumstances that could help us to understand where the leap was made.

Again, you are either being deceptive or are misleading yourself. We have concrete evidence that life didn't always exist. Therefore, the "life always comes from life" argument is not sound. That isn't the basis upon which we should form our opinions on life. We can observe that there was no trace of life on earth before a certain point through various means and thus we can know that in some exceptional case, some primordial form of life must have come from something that we would not describe as being alive. The conclusion that life came from no-life is entirely factually based. There is no other possibility.

3. The fact sentient life exists.

If the world according to atheism is to be believed, mindless forces also caused something else completely unlike the source it is alleged to have come from; sentient intelligence to exist.

Absolutely no different to a hot star giving birth to a cold planet. A bunch of molecules reorganized themselves through inevitable physical processes to form something that looks and behaves differently to other collections of molecules. Placing any value on this observation is foolhardy.

Mindless forces that can't think, dream, feel, create, design or act autonomously created conscious self aware sentient beings that can dream, feel, create, design and act autonomously.

The nature of consciousness is quite beyond our intuitive capacity to comprehend, so it's not surprising that this argument comes up a lot. It's not an argument though- it's just God of the gaps. It's near-impossible to understand consciousness, therefore something intelligent must have done. There's no reason to make this claim, or any other claim.

Something vastly more complex and sophisticated was created by something vastly less complex and sophisticated minus any plan or intent to do so. In other words it just happened to have happened.

This isn't really a point at all. Every interaction of molecules on a large scale is complex. The complexity absolutely has not changed- molecules have merely rearranged by the same fundamental forces that dictate all relationships between matter. Beneath all of this apparent complexity is a beautiful simplicity which sweeps away the illusion that life has some special quality that is detached from the rest of physics.

As sentient humans we have progressed to the point where we can create on a computer virtual worlds. We can create AI avatars to interact in the worlds of our creation and as sentient beings we can create the laws of nature as we see fit in such virtual worlds. This is the closest model we have to creating a universe with unique laws of physics. In those worlds we are the transcendent gods who caused them to exist. We don't have to ask if the God model is possible, we simulate such ourselves.

It certainly is possible, but no more probable than any other speculation. Thus holding and guarding such a position is foolish.

4. The fact the universe has laws of nature, is knowable, uniform and to a large extent predictable, is amenable to scientific research and the laws of logic deduction and induction and is also explicable in mathematical terms.

My opponents often speak in glowing terms of how the laws of physics alone can account for all we observe. Why are there rocky planets that evolved from second generation stars? Because of the laws of physics and fusion that causes simple matter to turn into more complex matter. But it's not because something more complex came from something simpler, it's because something very complex, the laws of physics caused matter to act in such a fashion.

The laws of physics are not over-arching and complex. They are not a rulebook. They do not exist. The study of physics is best described as the observation of patterns in matter. Just patterns. We express them as best we can in human, mathematical terms, and indeed they look complex from our perspective. It's just quantifying the qualitative. The sun doesn't obey numbers and equations- our numbers and equations are just our best approximation of the movements of the sun. To say that the laws of physics are complicated doesn't really make sense. The behavior of the universe is neither complex nor simple- it simply is.

The fact the universe has laws of physics that cause matter to act in a predictable manner is what allows the scientific approach to work. The laws of physics could be looked at as a code or blueprint that compels matter to act in a certain manner.

I wouldn't use such terms. Matter isn't compelled- it has no choice and no reason to do any particular thing, other than that it just happens to be the way that it interacts with stuff. The idea of a "framework" is just a human attempt to explain it in familiar terms. There really is no intuitive way of grasping what "the laws of physics" actually represent.

It's a fair question to ask why are there any laws of nature at all, least of all ones that caused the existence of sentient humans and support their existence. The theist would argue there are laws of nature that allow and even caused the existence of planets, solar systems, stars, galaxies and ultimately life because they were designed to do so.

I dealt with this already. You're starting from humanity and defining the entire universe in terms of its suitability for yourself.

A. The universe for some unknown (but naturalistic reason) had to be as it is. Although my opponents raise this naturalism in the gaps explanation, I suspect it's the explanation they believe in the least. At best all it does is the push the envelope back one step and we'd still wonder why if a universe comes into existence minus any plan or design there is some unknown characteristic that causes the universe to be as it is. Secondly, if the universe for some reason had to be as it is, how could you tell the difference between that and a universe that was designed to be as it is?

We cannot possibly know at present whether the universe must necessarily have been as it is. I do not support this claim.

B. This is one of an infinitude of universes with varying characteristics and we find ourselves in the one with the right attributes for life. This is the ultimate time and chance naturalism in the gaps explanation. We don't know if there are other universes or how they came about or if they do have varying characteristics. My opponents who claim to be led by the facts to conclude there is no God, are in reality lead by dubious theories they don't even claim to believe in.

Again, I cannot support this claim. It is a positive claim which posits the existence of things we have no evidence for.

C. We got lucky. If it's true there is no planner designer who is responsible for the existence of the universe this is the most likely explanation regardless of how unlikely it is that by chance alone mindless forces blindly stumbled upon the formula to create planets, solar systems, stars and galaxies minus any intention of doing so.

"Lucky" assumes that a universe ought to be made with us in mind as its goal. You should have said "the universe just happened to be this way, and did not have to be, and is not one of many" as this is what you're really pointing to. This is also claiming too much- I do not know whether there is one universe or many. I also don't know whether or not it had to be this way.

D. My personal favorite. The universe popped into existence uncaused out of nothing. I like this one the best because my opponents often deride theism as invoking magic yet offer this counter explanation as if it isn't magical.

I'm not sure this is verbatim what atheists believe. Again, how can I have any possible insight into this? Intuition tells me that it ought to have a cause, but physics is defying intuition increasingly more often.

5. The fact there are several characteristics of the universe that fall within an extremely narrow range that not only allow life as we know it, but also allow the existence of planets, stars, solar systems and galaxies.

Irrelevant, as I have pointed out before. So we exist. So what? Things are the way that we observe them to be, and if they were different then we would not be observing them. This thought may be deeply moving, but on the topic of theism it's just a banal observation and means nothing.

In his book 'Just Six Numbers' the deep forces that shape the universe, highly respected astrophysicist (and atheist) Martin Rees explains each constant in depth and the consequences if any of these constants were slightly different. So mind numbingly narrow is the degree of precision needed that as a result he concludes this is one of an infinitude of universes all with different characteristics and as a result we live in the universe with the right 'numbers'. A simpler explanation that doesn't needlessly multiply entities (to infinity in this case) is that the constants were intentionally designed to fall within a range that allows planets, stars and galaxies to exist.

Only if you insist on defining the entire, mind-boggling large universe in such a way as to make yourself feel special.

If atheists were actually looking for evidence that supports the belief that a personal agent caused and designed the universe to support life this would be such evidence. It is an earmark of design when personal agents such as humans create contrivances such as a computer or a car or a nuclear plant, that in order for the contrivance to work properly, it must fall in a narrow range of characteristics for the contrivance to work as designed.

This is simply backwards and from my previous comments I'm sure you can see what I mean.

When we create a hypothesis that attempts to explain a phenomena that wasn't directly observed, we propose models and see which one lines up best with the available facts and data. The model that best explains the observed phenomena and concurs with the available facts is the preferred model. The theist claim is that the universe and the attendant laws of nature were not the result of some mindless process that fortuitously got it right but instead was the product of planning and design. Theism offers an explanation that accounts for our existence and the existence of the universe, why sentient life exists and why the conditions and characteristics necessary for such to obtain resulted.

Theism offers no such account. There is no account. None. We do not know why we are here, how it all got started, or whether it had to be this way. Everything that you have argued in this post has been in some way misinformed. Neither of us has the mildest capacity to answer the above questions, and all of the reasons you gave for you own position were based on a bias towards humans, while your criticisms of atheism were based on a misunderstanding of what atheists mean when the refer to a "lack of belief".

I trust that you will disagree with or misunderstand my arguments, but if you do insist on responding then please do not return with a further batch of skewed perspectives that give importance to things which are only possibly valuable or desirable from the puny perspective of a fallible human. Your thinking is too small, and the universe too grand, for such self-centeredness to be permissible.[/i]