Dear Resident Theists

[Longhorn]

'pin, I'll respond to you later today or tomorrow when I'm not this drowsy, but I see m'boys Rob and Leo are doing a great job on their own

[Kingpin]

'pin, I'll respond to you later today or tomorrow when I'm not this drowsy, but I see m'boys Rob and Leo are doing a great job on their own

No worries.  I don't mind discussing with Rob and Lucanus in your absence.  They are both sensible and respectful.

[Pizza]

Machines can product complexity. Why not something like a computer?

And do computers/machines arise by natural unguided processes to produce the complexity?  No they are designed by intelligent minds to do so.

All that is needed for falsification is one case of complexity created by something that isn't an intelligent mind.

[Kingpin]

And do computers/machines arise by natural unguided processes to produce the complexity?  No they are designed by intelligent minds to do so.

All that is needed for falsification is one case of complexity created by something that isn't an intelligent mind.

But a computer or machine is not such an example.  They are a tool created by an intelligent mind to automate production of a complex object.  An intelligent mind is still required.

[Angrboda]

[Kingpin]

[Pizza]

It doesn't matter that humans created computers. Computers are not minds and yet they produce complexity.

[Kingpin]

It doesn't matter that humans created computers. Computers are not minds and yet they produce complexity.

You miss the point. Would computers be capable of producing complexity without humans? No. It requires an intelligence to make it.

[Lucanus]

It doesn't matter that humans created computers. Computers are not minds and yet they produce complexity.

You miss the point. Would computers be capable of producing complexity without humans? No. It requires an intelligence to make it.

In the right physical and chemical conditions they could. Those conditions are very unlikely to be met, though, and humans act as a catalyst by making them way more likely.
Still, computers are examples of something non-conscious that can operate on its own, generating complexity in the process, independently from the existence of someone who built it. Once it's there, it works and it generates complexity, and it's still something that could be produced by natural means - no magic involved.

The fact that we design complex stuff is not evidence that it must always be the case. We have plenty of evidence to infer that life arose spontaneously on this planet just because the chemical conditions were right.

If you're gonna argue that the universe was fine-tuned for that, well, then why limit life to the grain of sand that earth is, compared to the size of the universe? Was your "omnipotent" God bound by something?


PS:
If you want a nice read on biology and complexity, there's this book called "Power, Sex, Suicide: mitochondria and the meaning of life" by Nick Lane which makes some excellent points about the origin of life and the rise of the eukaryotes.

[robvalue]

Well, we came about by natural processes. We evolved. I know Kingpin doesn't believe that, but that's scientific fact. There is no need for an assumption of intelligence behind our "design". (Our design is terrible, by the way. I want a fucking refund.)

(As usual, I don't talk about absolute certainty. I'm talking about things that are true beyond reasonable doubt. To doubt absolutely everything is to fail to have a discussion at all. I'm as hard solipsist-vulnerable as they come. I get it!)

So even though we, intelligence, built computers, we're really nothing more than mobile complex organic computers, and no intelligence designed us. So ultimately, computers came about by natural processes. We are nature. If intelligence was involved in our universe, it was at its inception, and not since.

Complexity is not evidence of design; simplicity is. We're really complicated and contrived. That does not point to a creator, even within the arguments which consider such a thing. It points to natural processes.

I understand it's natural to want to expect intelligence being behind everything. But the argument fails immediately. If intelligence must be behind everything, then intelligence must be behind "God" which raises way more questions than he answers. And an intelligence must be behind that intelligence, and so on.

Just giving God super intelligence-created-immune powers isn't reasonable, it's an admission that your own premise is flawed and the explanation doesn't actually work. Making god so ethereal that he doesn't actually "exist" either shows that he doesn't exist, or that again the argument is flawed. You're just making him out of paradox playdough. You're saying, "Everything needs a designer. That raises an impossible infinite regression paradox. But there can't be this paradox, and so something must fix the paradox. I call this thing God." You're literally saying God does the impossible, it fixes a paradox. But there is no paradox in the first place.

Maybe there is intelligence behind our reality somehow, maybe not. If there is, maybe there is intelligence behind that intelligence, maybe not. But at some point, the "maybe not" has to come true. Insisting that the answer is yes and then no is arbitrary. We simply have no clue at all. The parent reality, if there is one, could well be the ultimate one, but there's no reason it has to simply contain some weird supreme being and not much else.

What the fuck am I talking about? Get me my meds. Nurse, I think I'm lost, take me to my room...