quote:Originally posted by King of Men: And what are the chances of a creator sufficiently complex to create everything we see coming into being 'by accident'?
See, that's the thing. We don't think God is complex at all. On the contrary.
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So a being capable of creating all the complexity of the universe and comprehending it utterly is simpler than all the complexity of the universe?
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I'd like to point out that there's a serious dis-analogy in the story of the line drawing. Namely, that I could find the artist who did the drawing, and could have him or her redo it. I could watch as it was done, and even learn how to do it myself. Basically, I have experience, not only of the created object, but of it being created. That's not to say of course, that I've seen every painting in every step of it's creation, but that I DO have experience generally of how they're created. Furthermore, I can give a verifiable account of who created a given painting.
I suspect that if I visited an alien world and viewed the ruins of an ancient, extinct species, I would only be able to identify their structures as created to the extent that they shared traits with human structures. If they had nothing common, or at least very little, I doubt anyone would guess at their true nature without serious study.
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"I think it's a reasonable claim. A single regularly shaped object, as opposed to the world of complexity we live in?"
On the other hand, regularly shaped objects don't appear in this world of simplicity we live in. And its really a rather simple universe, with a few basic laws governing the entirety of what exists. The complexity seems to stem in large part from iterative processes.
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2001 is one of my favourites. I think that seeing the key elements of the story as evidence for god is a rather creative interpretation.
quote:But was it? Why was it so obviously an artifact? I mean, the chances of a huge, perfectly formed rectangular monolith forming on the moon over the time the moon has existed are actually much greater than the chances of the world coming into existence as it is, with the complexity of the human body and other organisms, but I'm willing to bet that not a single person walked away from the movie 2001 shaking his head and saying, "But that's dumb. So there was a big rectangular block on the moon. What does that prove?"
Even if that premise were true--that the perfectly rectangular object is more probable than life coming into existence--the fact of the matter is that the beginning of life can be an extremely improbable event. Through telescopes, spectroscopes, and other instruments we see and study countless multitudes of stars and their planets, but we find that few are in the 'Goldilocks zone' with conditions similar to Earth's, and of the planets we've studied, we haven't found a single one which shows solid evidence of supporting or having supported life. Yet the fact that we are here talking about this means that we must be on one of those very rare planets. I think what I'm getting at is called the anthropic principle.
quote:I don't see the "world as accident" view as plausible. Even if we knew nothing about God, the world itself is evidence that there's a creator.
I don't think we have grounds for calling the Big Bang an accident, but even if we did, it doesn't make a creator likely at all. God can't be simple if he could create the universe, and positing his existence only moves the question of origin to a further remove; who created god?
With the line drawing, you're basically using the argument; if it looks designed, it probably is. This was probably the best argument for a creator figure of some kind, until Darwin. Now that evolution explains how such complexity can arise without direction from a creator, the argument no longer holds much water.
quote:Originally posted by Paul Goldner: "I think it's a reasonable claim. A single regularly shaped object, as opposed to the world of complexity we live in?"
On the other hand, regularly shaped objects don't appear in this world of simplicity we live in. And its really a rather simple universe, with a few basic laws governing the entirety of what exists. The complexity seems to stem in large part from iterative processes.
Snowflakes, crystals. You could conceivably have a square crystal.
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