I’ll make this short and sweet. I’m often told that the orderliness of the universe is evidence (or at least part of it) for the existence of God. Ok, maybe it is. But then, wouldn’t disorder (or “chaos”) be evidence against him?
If not, why not?
Many thanks to anyone who answers. I shall now (mostly) step back in silence to learn from superior minds.
I would say that there is no need for evidence *against *God. There is no evidence *for *God.
Anyone asserting the existence of God isn’t doing it with any weight at all. They are simply stating a favored fantasy and expecting it to be respected.
That said, Chaos isn’t an argument against God because I don’t see a necessary requirement that there be no chaos if there were a God.
I’d guess that many religious folk told that chaos is increasing would blame this on the approaching end times and embrace their god even harder.
For me personally, it was the movie Ghost that cemented my atheism, when the bad guy died and black wraith-demons showed up to take away his soul, presumably to Hell forever and ever. It kinda made me feel sorry for the wraiths - what kinda lousy job is that to have to keep punishing some schmuck for eternity?
Well, that plus it violates the laws of thermodynamics.
That’s not the question, though. We’ve done the burden of proof debate countless times. The question is whether or not disorder could be used as evidence against a god, and I think the answer has to be yes. I doubt it would convince anybody because the believer would say “free will” and then there would be a stalemate, but it could be used as evidence.
I agree. If it’s not too much trouble, could you elaborate on what your reaons for taking this position are?
“Order” in the universe, is evidence of a uniform set of underlying physical principles. Many natural philosophers and theologians looked at this as rational evidence of God to explain this uniformity, which ultimately lead to a schism between non-evidential faith and the iterative hypotheses-falsification methodology of the applied scientific method; in short, looking for order produced basic operating principles that didn’t require the intervention of a supernatural intellect.
Some, of course, argue that this simply indicates that a god (or gods) concocted the universe with a set of rules and then stepped back, or is only transitorily involved in the affairs of humanity, i.e. sending his son to be brutally tortured and killed in order to save humanity from the original sin (which itself was a blatant put-up job, so one does have to wonder what the real motivation is) but this rationale is ultimately non-falsifiable, as the gods can just retreat behind a never-ending set of curtains of fundamental rules.
Most Christian faiths maintain the need for faith and non-objective “personal evidence” as a fundamental element of observance, i.e. that faith beyond proof is required in order to properly accept and love the Christian God. This negates any inherent contradictions between stories and Biblical mores as interpreted in any literal or objective fashion (see All True Bible Stories For Children) and contesting this is like wrestling with a greased pig. Douglas Adams makes a cogent argument against the mandatory faith argument in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with the Babel fish, an organism that offers a capability so remarkable and beyond any possible chance (it acts as an evolved “Universal Translator” that converts any spoken language into coherent brain wave patterns of the host, and as a waste byproduct allows instant translation of language between species, ultimately leading to more conflict and destructiveness) that it is incontrovertible proof of God, therefore denying the faith-only argument, QED it is proof of the non-existance of God. The logic of this is, of course, intentionally absurd, but only as a counterpoint to the equally absurd appeals based upon faith.
As for the question of the o.p., “disorder” could just be part of God’s Mysterious Plan that you are just not privy to, hence undermining the entire argument. There are limits to logic, especially when you are dealing with an illogical or unfounded premise like the existence of a being that is beyond discovery and hyperadvanced in every possible way, but still spends time to smite small children who make fun of an old man’s baldness.
Stranger
Keep in mind that “order” and “chaos” are perspectives that humans apply to the world. One thing that really grinds my gears is when people see the natural environment and say it’s disorderly. For instance, flipping coins.
People say that flipping coins is an example of a random, 50/50 chance. That one could come up, or the other could. However, I guarantee that someone could invent a robot that could flip a certain coin with 100% accuracy. I mean, what alternative is there? That somehow there is a magical force that compels the coin to be unpredictable?
The result of the coin toss are determined completely by the combination of the motions of the tosser, the air/gravity etc, and the makeup of the coin itself. It is in no way at all “random”. The only randomness that there is comes from our not taking the time to calculate how it will turn out before we toss it.
It reminds me of the “eenie meenie miney moe” game. When you’re a kid it’s random, but once you count it out and discover that there are 24 movements (or whatever), you can predict perfectly what the result will be.
“order” and “chaos” are just two words we use to describe how the world works, but usually they can be better replaced with “constructive” and “destructive.” Even that is subjective - a baby being born is constructive because it constructs a new member of society, while a baby dieing destroys life… but on the other hand, birth destroys all the food the mother had to eat to produce it, while death constructs an excellent food source for bacteria etc.
Isn’t it your argument? 
All I would say is that I think it could be used as an argument against a god, depending on the characteristics of the god. You could argue that disorder indicates an imperfect universe, and that would at least argue against an all-powerful god. Like I said, the person you were arguing with would probably just respond that god wants people to have free will, and then you’ll spend the rest of the conversation arguing about why that would be. And yes, the previous posters make a good point: the fact that something appears disordered to you doesn’t mean it would appear that way to someone with an omniscient perspective.
It depends on the definition of the god in question. One of the problems with arguments like this is that believers often redefine what they mean by “God” on the fly to evade arguments. So for the duration of the argument at least, suddenly God won’t object to disorder anymore and thus disorder won’t qualify as evidence against it. Then once you are gone, order will again be evidence of God.
No, there are processes that are fundamentally random and not predictable even knowing the initial conditions to a defined precision. Now, all processes are ultimately stochastic, i.e. they fall into a statistical distribution (although for truly random systems like white noise, it may be a uniform distribution across the range), and one can make predictions of the probability of a certain outcome, or an accurate guess about the sum of multiple outcomes based upon that distribution, but many single events are genuinely random and cannot be explicitly calculated even in theory.
Stranger
What do you mean by “disorder” or “chaos”?
In science, “chaos” has the specific meaning “extremely sensitive to changes in initial conditions”. For example, flipping a coin by imparting a speed of 1.521 m/s and spin of 435.8 rpm might result in a different side landing up than 1.522 m/s and 435.7 rpm. Are you referring to this difficulty in prediction outcomes because of lack of precise knowledge?
“Disorder” might refer to the entropy of a system. That’s a measure of how many ways things can arranged. For example, take a big box with some coins in it. Maybe they are all heads up–that is low entropy because there’s only one way all the coins can be heads up. Compare to the case where half the coins are heads up. There’s many ways for that to be–HHHTTT, HHTHTT, HTHTHT, TTHHTH, etc. That’s high entropy. Are you referring to nature’s tendency to prefer arrangements with high entropy?
There’s also a similar concept in quantum physics. Under some conditions, the outcome of events is fundamentally unpredictable. Avoiding the physics-speak, we can compute the chance of something happening, but not whether it will happen or not. We can prove that this isn’t due to a lack of precision in our information, but a fundamental “randomness” in how the world works. Are you referring to this inherently unpredictable nature?
I would not use any of these as evidence either for or against God. They are descriptions of how the world works, not religious claims.
It was proof of the non-existence of God in the Hitchhikers Guide to the galaxy. The reasoning is that the babble fish’s function as a universal translator would be absolute proof that God exists, yet there can not be such absolute proof that God exist due to the faith only argument (both which you stated), therefor God can’t exist (the conclusion was).
It depends on which God you’re talking about. Discordians would use it as evidence FOR Her.
I would say if you’re talking about the Xian God, the primary counter-argument you’re going to get is some variation of “mysterious ways”. Disorder must be important in God’s Plan, just in ways we can’t understand with our feeble human understanding. But if only we Trust in God, All Will Be Well.
Basically, what you’re stating is that:
There can’t be any evidence for the non-existence of any entity that’s defined vaguely enough.
I’d go further and say that any evidence you can dig up that supposedly disproves such an entity can used equally well in favor of its existence. It just requires a redefinition of its supposed properties or stating of new properties (and this is ALWAYS possible in the case of gods, since they’re a purely hypothetical construct with no well-defined meaning).
For instance; the increase in disorder is due to god’s plan, therefore disorder proves god.
I mean it in the colloquial sense people commonly use in debates over intelligent design. Such as, “Because the world is orderly (stuff happening in nature in a seemingly predictible way) we can tell that the universe didn’t happen by chance.”
I meant it in the sense of “happening for no reason.”
Well, perhaps they shouldn’t be used as religious claims. But the fact is, they are. I guess I’m asking this: assuming order (however it’s defined) could be used as evidence for God, could disorder (however it’s defined) be used against his being real?
vyuic u76
lkhg
0788 678o0r 6k je64hil;tjmy4ehjmnb l j ik;b7kybgk7
hguy7 ijh
97
]0-p-p 88 b9b6po7bvtjgcfnmdr
This post is ordered: the letters are arranged into coherent words and sentences. It would not be unreasonable for you to take that as evidence that this post has been created by an intelligent being (i.e. me); it did not just come into being on its own.
My previous post is disordered and chaotic. But is that evidence that I don’t exist? I can vouch for the fact that I, an intelligent being, created that post, too.
I’m having trouble thinking about the universe in such vague terms, but I guess it’s possible. I don’t think these definitions are useful for discussing nature.
In general terms, yes, one can use evidence of the lack of order to refute an argument dependent on the existence of order. However, I think either argument is overreaching the science. In other words, calling nature “orderly” or “disorderly” is an oversimplification.
Interesting.
I can see how this would stand to reason. However, it’s assumed that God has such a perfect nature that he’s incapable of acting against it. Whereas, it’s thought our humanity is comprised of a flawed nature so we’re capable of acting in ways contradictory to a consistent standard of behavior.
So, I’m not sure the comparison holds up.
According to the Taoist faith, Order & Chaos are not opposing forces but two halves of the same whole.
As for disproving “God” – well, first you need to define who or what “God” is. Good luck getting any kind of reasonable consensus on that particular question…
Tell your cat to stop sending my cat secret missives – he retired from the CIA months ago. 