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RE: Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God

in #science8 years ago

All of these various arguments essentially boil down to this reasoning: Nothing ordered can come into being on its own. It must have originated with something orderly. The existence of organized fundamental laws ("fine tuning") cannot explain how they came into being. And, things that appear designed must have a designer, a Creator, who is orderly and thoughtful.

The problem with this argument is that it collapses under its own weight. It actually doesn't argue for the existence of a Creator, but rather for the impossibility of such existence. Here's what I mean.

Complete this sentence for me: If EVERYTHING that is orderly and fine tuned MUST have been so ordered and so tuned by some higher power (a Creator), and if that higher power ITSELF is orderly and fined tuned, then...????

You see the problem?

Creationists attribute the very order and fine tuning observed in the universe to God's OWN NATURE. But yet, if God's OWN NATURE is orderly and fined tuned, and if everything orderly and fined tuned MUST have a Creator, then God himself must, by the author's own logic, have a creator. And his creator must also have has a creator. And so on. And so on.

This logic results in an endless and useless regression that explains absolutely nothing. It CANNOT be true that everything exhibiting characteristics of order and fine tuning must have been ordered and fine tuned by a higher power, because then that higher power itself would likewise have to have been ordered and fine tuned.

Thus, we cannot rationally infer the the universe must have been created unless we are then likewise willing to infer that the creator was created, and so on. Anything else is intellectually dishonest.

So, if it's NOT true that everything orderly must have been ordered (since this leads to endless regression), then as a matter of pure logic, one of two things is true. Either the universe has existed forever and INHERENTLY contains the fundamental laws of order within it (why is this any more difficult to conceive than hypothesizing that it was instead created by an invisible God who has existed forever and inherently contains the laws of order within Him?), or else it is possible, despite the author's unsupported contentions to the contrary, for something (the universe) to arise spontaneously from nothing (chaos). One of these things must be true as a matter of logic. Either way, the author's argument for inferred design fails under its own weight. In law school, we call this being "hoisted on one's own petard".

It's simply an intellectual cop out to say that the Universe itself CANNOT inherently contain the fundamental laws of nature that allow order to slowly arise out of chaos, but that it's creator God could contain these laws. Just as it is disingenuous to insist that the universe can't have existed forever, but it's creator could have. The former is no more difficult to believe than the later, and if Occam's Razor is any guide, more likely to be true.

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Um, because God showed up in Person and revealed which of those two inherently impossible alternatives was really true.

Supposing there was a group of people traveling about your area today, led by a charismatic speaker who claims the world is ending soon but he alone can save you IF you sell your belongings, devote your life to him and cut off family members who try to stop you? He would also like you to leave your home and job if necessary to follow him.

What sort of group is that? Do we have a modern word for organizations of that type?

Yep. It would be called a false prophet. :)

Now, if all the details about him matched thousands of years of prophesy and you got to watch him perform routine miracles on a daily basis for several years, then it would be your responsibility to recognize him and get on board.

A cult, you mean. Specifically of the 'end of the world' variety.

Now, if all the details about him matched thousands of years of prophesy

They don't. You were misled, Jesus actually satisfies almost none of the criteria for messiah laid out in the Torah: http://www.aish.com/jw/s/48892792.html

and you got to watch him perform routine miracles on a daily basis for several years

Muhammad also performed miracles. Is Islam therefore true? "Well hang on" you might say, "the only record of those miracles is the Qur'an, hardly an unbiased source". But the same is true of Jesus' purported miracles. They are recorded in the Bible, but no other source from that time period.