Atheism and the existence of peanut butter

[polymath257]

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I disagree. The reason we can look at a car engine and know it was designed is that we know through experience that car engines don't arise spontaneously from the application of the laws of nature without a designer. But we also know that there are a great many situations where the laws of nature can produce high complexity *without* a designer being involved because of feedback loops and sensitive dependence on initial conditions.

Why do you separate the laws of nature and the designer? Why can't these laws be an instrument of a supreme designer?

As for the physical laws themselves, I think it is incoherent to talk about their being 'designed' or 'caused' simply because those physical laws are what govern causality. 

Do you have some source or justification of this ? 
So, if there were no physical laws, do you think causality could be violated..???

Instead, it is most coherent to have the laws be basic (uncaused) and the universe obeying such laws naturally. To postulate an intelligent designer requires a great deal *more* complexity. Think about what is required to even have a mind: the number of interacting parts, the feedback loops, the very laws of physics required to allow for such. When that is taken into account, it becomes far *more* probable that a few basic laws are fundamental and that consciousness, minds, and other things like that are the *result* of such laws, not the cause of them.

If we accept this, then it follows that the universe is eternal. If the laws of physics are uncaused, then there always was a universe where these laws apply (since they are descriptive of some existent state of affairs, not prescriptive).

And asserting that the universe is eternal is simply a claim, that I doubt anybody can prove.

If there were no physical laws, there would be no causality at all. Causality (such as exists) *is* a physical law or derived from such.

For there to *be* a designer takes enough structure and orderliness that some sort of physical laws (or laws governing the behavior of the designer) are required. So the most fundamental laws *cannot* be designed, but must be uncaused.

No, it does NOT follow that the universe is eternal, just that the physical laws, time, space, matter, and energy are co-existent. It is *possible* that all are of limited duration. of course, it is also *possible* that they are all eternal (infinite in duration). We just don't know.

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A universe requires a cause, it can't just pop out of nothing.

Would you please define, as you understand it, the words "universe" and "nothing"?

Not to mention 'pop out' in a context where time is finite in extent.