(October 22, 2020 at 7:22 am)Klorophyll Wrote:(October 22, 2020 at 3:31 am)Sal Wrote: Eskimo: If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to Hell?
Priest: No, not if you did not know.
Eskimo: Then why did you tell me?
Alter the relevant nouns, and the message remains the same.
To know about God and religion does generally give one a meaning to his life. A book I read recently, "The Denial of Death" summarizes the entire human civilization as one desperate attempt to construct a defense mechanism against our mortality. After presenting what the most significant psychologists offered as defense mechanisms, he argues that losing religion leaves humanity with obvious illusions to find meaning into. Science too doesn't serve as an immortality project, it doesn't give agreeable, absolute meaning to life. Besides, aside from the genius minority who succeeds at becoming a star in some specific research topic and immortalize their name, the rest of people can't really derive some genuine, long lasting satisfaction or sense of immortality from doing science.
(October 22, 2020 at 7:03 am)Nomad Wrote: Teleological arguments aren't evidence they're claims. And they're claims made in the absence of evidence at that.
Oh and the appeanace of design doesn't and can't prove god, because it isn't evidence of design. Plenty of random sequences can be made to look like patterns, especially if you cut away the bits that are more obviously random.
Well first of all, the evidence supporting these arguments is the very appearance of design around us. If appearance of design isn't evidence of design, then nothing can possibly be evidence of design. My computer appears to be designed, but I can't reach, by some formal syllogism, the conclusion that it is designed. I still know that design is the best explanation of what I have in front of my eyes. The same goes for the universe, we already unraveled a great deal of sophistication regarding the laws of the universe. How everything just fits together perfectly, to serve a specific purpose, like holding the matter together or keeping some mass in some specific orbit. If this doesn't point to a lawgiver, then nothing can possibly lead you to a lawgiver.
If one asks to actually "see" the lawgiver, then it's not going to be of much help, even if his wishes come true. As he would still have a way out by claiming he was bewitched or his senses are deluded. You can only follow the best explanation for the appearances that reach your senses, asking for more is downright stupid.
Appearance of design is not evidence of design. A random pattern which takes on a simulcrum of order doesn't make it an ordered pattern.
Anyway, one really has to ignore the evidence to suggest that there is an appearance of design in reality. Thake the human body, there are many redundancies, flaws, obsolescences and other items in every human that no actual designer would ever countenance, no matter how incometent. Like who would make it so that you can easily asphyxiate yourself while eating dinner. Nobody would think that haing your breathing tube and eating tube be the same tube is a good idea, yet that is how humans are "designed". We can look at lots of other problems like the appendix or junk DNA and see nany evidences for the absence of design, but in reality find no evidence for it.
Design is not an explanation for the universe and anybody who insists that it is are not looking at reality ir even any approximation of it. Take your iron-age paedophiliac musings and shove them where the sun doesn't shine, it'll do you the world of good.
Urbs Antiqua Fuit Studiisque Asperrima Belli
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