Atheism and the existence of peanut butter

[polymath257]

In other words, you are saying that causality is a matter of faith and, even if the best theory we have suggests otherwise, you will *insist* that there is always a cause.

But the fact of the matter is that to regain causality in the context of quantum mechanics, you need to go to a version of superdeterminism. It isn't just that we cannot detect causality violations, but that the type of hidden variable theories required to have local causation have been excluded via observation.

You're not very coherent here, I am afraid. You're acknowledging above that we cannot detect causality violations, and yet at the same time declare that the best theory we have doesn't preserve causality...!!??? If QM doesn't allow observing violations, then how do you know causality is violated ?

Sorry, I misspoke. We *can* detect causality violations.  There are observations hat have been made that exclude *any* hiddent variable theories that are local.

Classical physics tells us that causality is preserved in the grand scheme of things, there is no reason to assert otherwise unless we can really observe causality violations.

Classical physics is known to be wrong. That is why we currently use quantum physics. And quantum physics is NOT a causal theory: it is a probabilistic theory.

And we have done so: look up Aspect's experiment related to the EPR paradox. The observations violate Bell's inequalities which *must* be satisfied by any locally causal system.

There is literally no cause for the timing of a nuclear decay. There is literally no cause for whether a double slit experiment measures spin up or spin down.

Unless you are an omnipotent being, I don't see how you, or anyone, can assert that nuclear decay is uncaused.

Well, the best predictive theory has it as uncaused. In other cases where that theory says the same sort of things, we have verified that no local hidden variable can explain the observations.

Not being able to point out a cause is *observationally equivalent* to there being no cause. 

Not being able to point out a cause means that our science is limited, this is called epistemic humility. It's clearly a dishonest move to say there is no cause if we can't currently detect one.

It isn't just not being able to detect one *right now*. it is that we have a workable theory that describes things incredibly well that is also not a causal theory.

At that point, it becomes arrogant to say that there *must* be a cause.

Another problem with your thinking, is that, we don't detect design by their complexity, we detect design by contrasting designed things with things that occur naturally.

I am familiar with this objection to the arguments from design. But there is a very big problem with it : if the only way to recognize that x is designed is to contrast it with some naturally occuring y. Then we are begging the question of whether y is designed or not. The hidden assumption in this objection is that naturally occuring things aren't designed, which is simply a restatement of naturalism.......

And at that point, it is a simpler system to not have a designer. Unless there is a definite explanatory advantage to postulating a designer (which there isn't, or else we could test it), then it is pointless to assume such exists.