Your argument kind of hinges on this, I think.
What high degree of elegance and functionality are you thinking of exactly when you think of the universe?
And you don’t see elegance and functionality in animals or flowers f.i.?
We know they weren’t designed.
Isn’t that argument at least, if not more, applicable to the concept of God?
The point with whatever is before the ‘universe creation event’ is that it could be anything, or nothing. Our entire universe could have been shat out by purple hippo living in a unverse with 2 spacial dimensions and 3 time-dimensions and where skinny jeans made people actually look good. There is simply no way of knowing, since it was outside our universe.
It also doesn’t need to not have six thousand hairy balls, but if there’s no reason to think that it needs them then Occam rules it out.
So this creator entity isn’t “bound by time”? What does that even mean?
Something that doesn’t change with time, well, isn’t capable of change, like making a decision or taking an action I would think. But then again I’m not so sure what to think about something that isn’t “bound by time.” Can you flesh that out a little?
Nope. As stated, I start with things I know are designed. Then I look to see if I can find elegant and functional things that I know aren’t designed. Then I draw inferences about what elegance and functionality are signs of.
But if you assume a designer that created everything, you can’t find anything that isn’t designed. At least I think that that was the point.
So, uh, life?
I mean, as a Deist, you don’t believe Jesus rode dinosaurs, right? So how is life, the result of random natural processes, not elegant and functional?
Neither “elegance,” nor functionality require “design.” There is zero evidence of design in the universe outside of whatever is designed by animals on earth.
I sure do - but we don’t know whether DNA replication with a small chance of a beneficial mutation is a designed process. We don’t even know if life can arise spontaneously from non-living matter. Hence, you can not say that we know flowers and animals weren’t “designed”.
See #326
If something isn’t bound by time, then it isn’t undergoing any sort of before-and-after change.
A creator deity could be in a constant state of creating, decision-making, etc.
But I don’t start by assuming a designer created everything. I start with something that I know is designed (like a windmill).
Please give an example of something that we know is not designed, that is both highly elegant and highly functional.
See #332.
“Elegant” is an aesthetic and doesn’t mean anything scientifically. A nice rock is functional for many things and is not designed.
Octopus eye.
Oh come on. By your standards, we know nothing is not designed. You said life doesn’t count because even though there is a completely well understood natural mechanism for life to evolve, and it requires no design or supernatural elements whatsoever, you say you can’t prove god didn’t secretly design it that way without evidence even though involving god is completely unnecesary.
So you just said that nothing can be proven not to have been designed, and now you’re demanding to know what we think isn’t designed.
This is just juevenile.
Bzzz. Try again! We don’t know if the DNA replication process is designed, nor do we know if life can even arise spontaneously from non-living matter to get the thing in motion. Both are pre-requisites to get to octopus eye.
By your criteria, what do we know not to be designed?
Nope. If the universe is designed, there is NOTHING that isn’t designed, hence you cannot compare designed objects against undesigned objects, since there are only designed objects. It’s pure circular logic.