Small post Clarifying a common fallacy here.

[Edwardo Piet]

Yes and I think just as there are many things that logically are said to imply something. As in if X happens then Y MUST happen. And that's just what has happened thus far. If up untill now X always implies Y then its not unreasonable to use the word 'must' because otherwise you might as well NEVER use it because nothing can be proven or disproven absolutely (as far as we know, lol, I'm not absolute about 'even' that).

Well considering how I've said earlier in the thread that the two kinds of complexity; - 1: difficult to understand and 2: something that is unlikely to simply come about by chance - often get mixed up... and right now I'm talking about number 2 - I would say that with this definition of complexity a particle that is fully conscious AND omnipotent would be complex! It wouldn't be ultimately simple! Because its total consciousness and omnipotence would give it a lot of complexity.

By your definition, biological life is 'simple'. I don't think that's the kind of complexity people are talking about here.

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Huh?

Well the thing is it would be very unusual indeed for a particle to be omnipotent and fully conscious! I don't see how that is possible!

Being fully conscious and omnipotent makes something very complex. That something is very unlikely to come about by chance.

But for something to be omnipotent and fully conscious it would almost certainly have to be made up of just one particle I would think! Many particles working together to make consciousness and omnipotence is very complex.

But for all that to work with just one particle you think that would be even MORE complex? How bloody sophisticated would a particle have to be to do things that would very probably normally take a great great many particles?

But generally the combo of many particles working together would be very complex.

Both alternatives are certainly very complex to me.

I'm curious, where exactly by my own definition do I say that biology is simple?

[Ephrium]

What you showed here, is what you should be doing.

A Claim was posted. That the creator MUST be at least as complex.

My post then challenged it. I do not agree with the claim.

If you claim I have not shown any evidence so far, neither has the opposing side.

I have at least one. It is evident to me that it is certainly possible that one day, humans will be able to create a robot, faster and better and more intelligent than he is.

Given that according to atheism, at its core, humans are no more than an arrangement of molecules.

I give this scenario. Tell me why this scenario CANNOT happen.

If I were to claim "there is no God" then all someone would have to do to prove me wrong would be to find a God.
If I were to claim "A creator must be more complex than it's creation" the all someone would have to do to prove me wrong would be to find a creator that is less complex that it's creation.

Both are reasonable assertions because there is no evidence. It is up to the person making the positive claim to give the evidence (i.e. the theist must provide evidence for their God to counter the claim that it doesn't exist). You cannot be called to prove a negative if you assert something. It is up to the opposition to come up with proof FOR the existence.

Otherwise I put forward the following suggestion: "There exists a small pink dog at the centre of the Sun". This is my claim, your claim would be "The small pink dog doesn't exist". Since you cannot prove a negative, I could not rationally ask you to prove your claim, but I would have to prove mine. The burden of proof always lies with the one making the claim for the positive.

I am merely clarifying a fallacy that the creator MUST be as or more complex.

And I am merely pointing out how it is not a fallacy. You came up with a claim, it was challenged. You provided no evidence towards the observation that creators are always more complex than their creations. You gave not one example which was not refuted. You then proceeded to back out of the argument, and then you have the audacity to keep going on about it. Do you want a debate or not here? If you do, then provide some evidence to back up your claims. If not, accept that you have been defeated in your arguments so far. You don't have to give up your belief that you are right, but only accept that you have been beaten in a debate.

[allan175]

What you showed here, is what you should be doing.

A Claim was posted. That the creator DOESN'T HAVE TO be at least as complex.

My post then challenged it. I do not agree with the claim.

If you claim I have not shown any evidence so far, neither has the opposing side.

I have at least one. It is evident to me that it is certainly possible that one day, humans will NEVER be able to create a robot, faster and better and more intelligent than he is.

Given that according to atheism, at its core, humans are no more than an arrangement of molecules.

I give this scenario. Tell me why this scenario CANNOT happen.

The same applies to your responses.

The only issue with the post is the bit I've made bold. "No more than an arrangement of molecules" sums up *everything*.

[leo-rcc]

A Claim was posted. That the creator MUST be at least as complex.

My post then challenged it. I do not agree with the claim.

We are not disputing the fact that you do not agree, but you claim it is a fallacy, I don't agree with that claim.

It is evident to me that it is certainly possible that one day, humans will be able to create a robot, faster and better and more intelligent than he is.

That is not evidence, that is an assertion. One that is not backup up by evidence.

Given that according to atheism, at its core, humans are no more than an arrangement of molecules.

The part "According to Atheism" I certainly do not agree with. All Atheism is a disbelief in gods. No more, no less. Whatever an Atheist does believe is up to the individual Atheist itself. Some Atheist believe in the duality of the mind, some believe in re-incarnation, some believe that aliens landed on this planet billions of years ago and injected life into the biosphere. There is no doctrine involved in Atheism.

Let us try it simplified this time.

You claim that "A creator must be more complex than it's creation" is a fallacy. Supply us with the evidence that that is a fallacy.

[Tiberius]

If you claim I have not shown any evidence so far, neither has the opposing side.

Giving evidence of things that are less complex than their creator is easy, and I could list 5 right now:

Car
Calculator
Mathematics
Mona Lisa
Acorn (less complex than an entire acorn tree)

I could go on, but I think you get the point.

When you have given evidence, it has been easily refuted (your chess game for example). So both sides have given evidence, only yours was mistaken and we have called you on it. That's how science works.

I have at least one. It is evident to me that it is certainly possible that one day, humans will be able to create a robot, faster and better and more intelligent than he is.

Technically speaking, we already have. The problem occurs when trying to get true AI, which doesn't exist in any form yet. The most we have been able to manage is machine learning, but the machine cannot teach itself without being programmed to know how to teach itself.

Another point about your example is the fact that you give no mechanism for determining complexity (as I have repeatedly asked you to do). At least I say that I have no reasonable way of determining the true complexity of things, but if you are to make a challenge that things can be more complex than their creator, you have to come up with a decent mechanism for determining complexity. Otherwise you could just argue that cars are more complex because they move faster, but cars are not as complex as the human body by a long shot.

Given that according to atheism, at its core, humans are no more than an arrangement of molecules.

I give this scenario. Tell me why this scenario CANNOT happen.

According to atheism, there are no gods. It doesn't say anything about us as a species or on a universal level. That would be "according to materialism".

I'm not saying it "cannot happen", I'm saying it never has and there is no reason to think it ever will. My claim that it doesn't happen is perfectly in line with the evidence, and if you want to counter that you will have to give one example (not speculation) of something created that was more complex that it's creator. So far you have claimed all sorts of things about your theory, such as "it's obvious", but you have not produced any evidence that wasn't either (a) completely ridiculous (i.e. the chess game), or (b) pure speculation (i.e. the "in the future we will have more complex robots etc").

Give us something that appears in the here and now, a way of determining its complexity, and we will consider it.

[lukec]

The concept of complexity is still being muddled here. A robot built by humans, even if it had ridiculous memory and speed etc, would not be in any way more complex than the humans that built it. It might be BETTER at certain things, but would not be more complex, in the sense of the molecules which constitute it.

Adrian- of your examples up there, I agree with them except for the acorn- in the sense of a creator being more complex than created, I think this is incorrect. An acorn is the SAME complexity, in my view, as the tree, in that it has quite complex interactions of biological molecules etc, and holds the exact instructions to "create" a new tree. But the problem, as you say, lies in the fact that we have not established a hierarchy of complexity, or a measuring stick by which to relate things.

So how many levels of complexity are there? To me, all of life is at the same "complexity" in relation to the universe itself (obviously there are internal levels of complex structures, but the actual components of all life are, at the most basic level, universally complex). So, maybe in this vein complexity could be simply ordered into two levels: living, and non-living. Living, of course, being higher "complexity" than non-living. If this is the case, than a creator, even if it did not create life and was only there to "jump-start" the universe, would HAVE to have be more complex than the unliving universe, since it would have been part of the "living" level of a hierarchy of complexity. It follows, then, that a creator which created life would, of necessity, have been more complex than it, in some sense. Even now, if we humans were to build a simple cell in a lab, we are more complex, in the hierarchy of living things, than that cell. How would it be possible to "create" something more complex than the creator if it is impossible to even properly conceive of a greater complexity than life (other than god, but by definition humans would be hard-pressed to create "Him").

[DD_8630]

By your definition, biological life is 'simple'. I don't think that's the kind of complexity people are talking about here.

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Huh?

Well the thing is it would be very unusual indeed for a particle to be omnipotent and fully conscious! I don't see how that is possible!

Well of course not! We're neither omnipotent, fully concious, nor individual particles. We can't expect to comprehend what such entities perceive (if they even exist).

Being fully conscious and omnipotent makes something very complex.

That sounds like a definition of 'complexity'. Could you elaborate on this?

[Edwardo Piet]

Well - I'm not saying its IMPOSSIBLE just because we can't conceive it. You can't prove a negative.

I just mean that I don't see how that is possible because its totally absurd and very complex and improbable indeed.

How could something be simple but be capable of doing all the things something really complex could? MAN that's complexity.
That's like you being equally as intelligent and able to function if you only had ONE brain cell in your brain.

Or the omnipotent crazy God of the OT - doing all that shit in the bible when he was nothing but a minute simple particle!
Ultimately simple but infinitely complex? Capable of doing all that when you're that simple? That's confusing - but I'd say - THAT'S COMPLEXITY. How the hell would that work?

Oh - and being fully conscious and omnipotent makes something very complex because that would be very very very improbable indeed to come about by chance. At least that's the way I understand it.

Just as the human eye is very, very, VERY unlikely to suddenly POP right into existence just by utter chance. It had to evolve very gradually indeed; over a massive period of time.

[DD_8630]

Well - I'm not saying its IMPOSSIBLE just because we can't conceive it. You can't prove a negative.

I just mean that I don't see how that is possible because its totally absurd and very complex and improbable indeed.

How could something be simple but be capable of doing all the things something really complex could? MAN that's complexity.
That's like you being equally as intelligent and able to function if you only had ONE brain cell in your brain.

Or the omnipotent crazy God of the OT - doing all that shit in the bible when he was nothing but a minute simple particle!
Ultimately simple but infinitely complex? Capable of doing all that when you're that simple? That's confusing - but I'd say - THAT'S COMPLEXITY. How the hell would that work?

Oh - and being fully conscious and omnipotent makes something very complex because that would be very very very improbable indeed to come about by chance. At least that's the way I understand it.

Just as the human eye is very, very, VERY unlikely to suddenly POP right into existence just by utter chance. It had to evolve very gradually indeed; over a massive period of time.

So, to you, 'complexity' is just another word for 'implausible'?

[Edwardo Piet]

No.

Did you not read what I put or were you building a stawman?

Or is it some kind of misunderstanding? Or something else?

Anyway, I mean - by complexity -specifically something that is implausible - but something that is unlikely to come about by chance. As I have already said.

The more unlikely to come about by chance the more improbable. Not just implausible for any reason - or 'intuitively' implausible. The loose "oh I can't see how that's possible or very likely" kind of thing. I'm talking about how it would very very very improbable for an eye to just 'jump' into existence. It takes very very long periods of evolution. One mutation on an animal without eyes wouldn't make a fully formed functioning eye of an animal like a bird, or a human. But very small changes over long periods isn't so improbable.

Eyes are very complex things because it is very very improbable indeed for them to come about by chance alone.
That's the kind of complexity I'm talking about. Things don't just 'happen'. And aren't 'just there'. Complex things certainly aren't! God would have to be much more complex than the universe because we're postulating another entity (a diety) that comes before the universe and had to know how to and be capable of creating it.

If from the beginning the universe is very simple indeed. God would almost certainly have to be more complex because he would have to be there before it, right from the beginning (or create himself out of nothing!) and make if all out of thin air - or out of himself - and no exactly how to do it. And he's just an extra edition.

If you could say God was there all along to create the universe. It would be far simpler to just say the universe was. God would have to be more complex because if the universe is ULTIMATELY simple when its created by God - he would have to be at least just a bit more complex to be capable of creating it. He's an unnecessary complex edition.

And thus far, its not how the universe works. All 'creators' are evolved beings like ourselves, thus far. No evidence otherwise so far.

And I have explained my definition of complexity. And why I think God would have to be more complex than the universe if he existed.

EvF