The existence of God

[Gwaithmir]

Yeah but believing things does make them true. This has been scientifically proven.

Yeah, and I'm King Isildur. 

[Mister Agenda]

Thanks for your reply. Fair enough that it doesn't connect to the Christian God. I just wanted to establish that fine tuning points to a designer of some sort. Your argument is that fine tuning is an illusion? There is a real case to be made that there is fine tuning though. If the physical parameters were different we may not even have atoms, let alone life. Why is the universe like that?

Why wouldn't it be like that?

Welcome, btw.

[Mister Agenda]

Maths models = academic numerology

Is that a bad thing?  As long as the models are testable and make falsifiable empirical predictions, they're scientific.

At least 'there are models for this hypothesis for which the math works' is more than any creation myth has.

[Mister Agenda]

I used to work on factory floors making  pcbs and later in full board and component soldering?

That's your personal, religious experience of interacting with magical plants producing circuit boards. Not a valid argument. 

I get it, when people spend a long time hallucinating about factory floors, they start to think they're real. It's all made up, unfortunately, all of it.

Say what you want about the atheists here, at least our objections to a capital-D Designer are sincere.

[Mister Agenda]

Parody arguments are routinely used in philosophy, it's not meant to mock anybody.

At this point, your parody seems indistinguishable from just lying.

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, it's either that....or he does truly believe that his gods authoring hand is no more or less ridiculous than the idea that computers aren't really designed, and all of the rest of that silliness.

If it's the latter, I wholeheartedly agree. They're completely equivalent propositions. Reductio achieved, his faith is no more or less ridiculous than his argument.

[Mister Agenda]

I gave my take on fine tuning in the The Ownership of Science Thread:

The statistical probabiity of fine-tuning depends on assuming that the constants referred to could be other than they are, that if they could be other than they are that they could differ enough to make life impossible, that if they could differ enough to make life impossible, they are independent of each other (that is, raising one by X doesn't mean that another has to be X lower, for instance) AND there are no other possible combinations where life different from what we're familiar with would be possible. That's a lot of ifs without even bringing other universes into it and we don't know the answer to any of them. It's not evidence, it's a thought experiment.

Besides, a universe in which life can exist naturally is the only kind of universe that doesn't require a supernatural explanation for why life exists. An omnipotent being could have us live thrivingly in a vacuum or on the surface of the sun, or without a strong force. What would such a being care for for what's physically possible? Imagine the puzzlement of scientists on the surface of the sun: According to my measurements, we should all be clouds of ionized vapor in this environment!

Edit: Acknowledgements to those who ninja'd me on my points.

[Nay_Sayer]

Obvious troll is obvious.

Every village has an idiot.

Some take more pride in the roll than others.

[R00tKiT]

That's your personal, religious experience of interacting with magical plants producing circuit boards. Not a valid argument. 

I get it, when people spend a long time hallucinating about factory floors, they start to think they're real. It's all made up, unfortunately, all of it.

Say what you want about the atheists here, at least our objections to a capital-D Designer are sincere.

Did I just read the word sincere?

I am literally at a loss of words right now. Maybe one day try to buy a book about human anatomy, or more specifically hand anatomy, like this one :

https://www.amazon.com/Hand-Wrist-Anatom...3132053414

The human hand is a complex combination of nerves, vessels, bones, ligaments and muscles. Each of these is an entire topic of study.. Your own hand is an extremely complicated machine with an instruction manual, a literal miracle. 

Just leaf through books like these and try to think about your position in a fresh way, should I continue to believe that all this complexity as described in front me is the product of an ad hoc expansion of the universe and the subsequent conjunction of billions of lucky events.. should I believe that unguided assembly of stardust led to me having nerves and vessels? How messed up in the head one must be to even consider this ?

Learning more about our own functioning to discover God is sincere advice, no parody. It's probably the most effective way to see how stupid atheism is.

I remember opening Oppy's book some weeks ago, Arguing about Gods, and passionately going through his chapter about teleological arguments, hoping I'd find serious argumentation from the other side, then I arrived at the following paragraph : 

"Suppose, instead, that Paley had come upon a rabbit’s heart lying on the common. Given a little background knowledge, he would have recognised that this is something with a proper function, with parts that have proper functions, and with parts whose material constitution is well suited to the functions that those parts play. (Think, for example, of the natural functions of cell membranes, cell nuclei, etc.) Nonetheless, I don’t think that there is the slightest reason to suppose that there is anything at all inevitable about the ‘inference’ from the observed properties of the rabbit’s heart to the conclusion that it is the product of intelligent design"

The part in bold disgusted me, I stopped reading immediately. All the complexity of the heart doesn't even hint design according to this deranged pedant. I lost all the respect I had for the atheist philosopher, a leading figure in modern philosophy of religion, by the way.  What's really disturbing is that this is the highest level of argumentation one is ever likely to read from the atheist camp, one can only imagine the kinds of pathetic reasons the rest of run-of-the-mill atheists have for denying design, or pretending they don't see it or, worse, think they have sincere objections.

Even a modicum of knowledge about human anatomy should lead one to a profound belief in a supreme creator. I really don't have any respect for anyone who thinks it's not enough.

[zebo-the-fat]

Human anatomy is a mess, what competent designer would have a common opening for breathing feeding and speaking? It's a stupid design. The only reason it works is because evolution does not need good design, just good enough to survive long enough to breed.