Does Argument from Design make God's existence LESS likely?

The concepts of logic and rationality, when the presence of one or more supernatural gods or goddesses is not axiomatic, fail to provide any indication of their existence. If you postulate their existence, you may postulate any qualities you wish. If you postulate self-contradictory qualities, you merely indicate that their nature cannot be understood using logic. In short, either you believe or you do not. Proof is irrelevant. Logic is only as relevant as you decide it to be.

Logic is only a tool to derive deductions from a set of axioms and to detect contradictions in that axiom set. Religions do not create testable definitions of their deity or deities. Most do not insist that their various articles of faith are non-contradictory. Applying logic or science to religion is as pointless and time-wasting as attempting to use a wrench to screw in a nail.

C’mon, people, God is a fictitious entity created by the programmers of the Matrix to keep us under control.

lissener:

I don’t know if that necessarily follows; my understanding is that the Jewish point of view is that even G-d can only do that which is not logically impossible (not to be confused with physically impossible, which he can, as all physical beings are his creation).

This whole thread is out of control and failing to address head-on the two main questions posed.

A lot of you are claiming the argument from design cannot work because the existence or non-existence of God is beyond logic or rational proof; there can be no evidence for or against the existence of God.

But the same could be said for everything if you adopt a thourougoing skepticism – we could all be brains in vats. The whole world might not really exist. How do we really know anything? This is the old sceptical arument, and I cannot really find a way to kill it it at this time. But it seems odd to me that anyone who argued from this sceptical point of view could believe in God, since God would be just as dubious as everything else if one takes scepticism seriously. (Decartes argued that the existence of God was certain based on a priori argumentation, especially the ontological argument, but the ontological argument is really a very poor argument.)

So if you are a sceptic, you cannot really take the existence of God seriously. If you are not a sceptic, that is, you believe that evidence can count for or against the probability that some proposition is true or false, why could not there be evidence supporting or tending not to support the existence of God? Why is the existence of God different from anything else? Why can we have good or bad reasons to believe in the theories of science, but not to believe in the existence or non-existence of God?

Some might answer: well, God is a question of faith, not reason. I don’t understand this. I can have faith in something and at the same time rationally say it is unlikely. And I can also find out that something I always believed (in which I had the utmost faith) is actually wrong or unlikey, so faith is open to revision in light of good reasoning and evidence.

Now, I admit that we don’t have enough evidence to definitively prove that God does or does not exists. This has no relevance to the original question I posed. The question was about the rationality of believing one thing over another. I will probably not win the lottery tomorrow, but it is possible that I will. I may think I have good reasons to believe God doesn’t exist, but this doesn’t mean I have proved that he does not or that it not possible.

My question was whether the argument I made was good. I think that the argument from design vis-a-vis the watch iteself is good – anyone who found a watch on the beach and believed it was not man-made but was randomly made by the ocean current would have to locked up in the looney bin. So how can God, a complex being, be made by a random process? If there is a complex but not-guided-by-intelligent-being-process that created God, something such as evolution, then God is really not the King of the universe. Something is more elemental and prior to God. If a higher God created God, who created the higher God?

My question was specifically geared towards the view of a God who is the end all and be all ultimate explanation for everything. I recognize the fact that the word “God” is vague. So I want to say that my question is regarding an intelligent designer who is fundamental, nothing being higher, more basic, or having created him.

Keeve mentioned the fact that Judaism regards God as non-complex. When I hear this, I think one of two things:

  1. God is some kind or energy or force or some explanatory principle of the universe-- if this is the case, you cannot really deny there is a God; of course there is something there that explains the world. But if God is nothing more than a physics principle, I think most people who believe in God would be pretty disappointed.

  2. It cannot be that a non-complex being could Intelligently create something. If the universe is complex, does not there have to be an idea in the mind of God that reflects this complexity? How else could he create the complexity. And if the idea is complex, then there is something complex within God. He cannot be totally undifferentiated. It also just seems intuitive to me that a blob of jello cannot think.

If it is plausable that a world so complex as ours could come into being without a creator, why is it implausable that a very simple creator could suffice to create it? It seems common for complexity to arrise from simplicity in our world; look at snowflakes or salt crystals, which arrise from nothing more than a chaotic stew of particles.

JasonFin: I agree, it is plausible that the world could come from something simple. As a matter of fact, I don’t believe in God and I believe in Evolution, which is a process that created complexity without an intelligent designer. What I acutally said was God’s simplicity and non-complexity was incompatible with his being an intelligent being. If he created the world through planning and design, he must of conceived of the world and its parts, and this involved having ideas about those parts which are at least as complex. So if God is intelligent, he must be complex. Certainly, God could be a simple non-complex thing, but then he could hardly said to be an intelligent, planning, conscious being. If God is simply a cold, unfeeling, unthinking process of nature, why bother to call him “God”. If God is energy, or some force that created the world, but is not an intelligent designer, who would bother to worship him? Might as well worship electricity – we see it every day when we turn on the light.

Daniel Shabbason:

It seems you have a problem with the idea that a simple intelligence , based on the complexity that accompanies intelligence in physical beings. However, (Orthodox) Judaism views G-d as non-physical. In the belief of (Orthodox) Judaism, G-d is a purely spiritual being. The requirements that the physical world demands in order to support intelligence do not bind a non-physical being.

Chaim Mattis Keller

For those who believe in evolution: is Random their God?

Capacitor: Don’t be stupid. I believe that evolution accounts for the existance of humans. But I don’t worship evolution. Evolution is not a god. And evolution does not work solely through random processes. Mutation is random, but natural selection is not random. I don’t worship anything.

CMKeller:

I do find it interesting to learn about the Jewish religion. Its amazing how little most people, including Jews, really know about the philosophical complexity of the religion.

Nevertheless, your answer doesn’t really do that much to satisfy my worry. Even if concepts are found in a purely spiritual being, the question still remains: Do the concepts, idea, or plans of God reflect the complexity of the world? If the world has many parts, Gods must have an idea that relects each of those parts. If so, God has many ideas that are different from one another. So God cannot be completely simple.

When I said that human minds were complex, I did not (I think) presume that human minds were physical (Although, parenthetically, I do not believe in the soul.) I left the issue completely open.

Why do you believe the spiritual nature of a being changes the complexity of the concepts/ideas in that being?

Daniel Shabbason:

Well, I could answer this in two ways:

First of all, a simple thing is capable of designing things more complex than itself. Today, we use simple computers to design and model their more complex successors.

Secondly, and perhaps more to the point of your issue: We don’t know just how the physical world appears to the non-physical being, G-d. We are constrained in our perceptions by our physicality. The perception of a non-physical being is something that, while we are living in this world, we are incapable of fully understanding. Before you just write this off as the tired, old “Mysterious Ways” argument, let me give a possible illustration:

The (Orthodox) Jewish religion believes that G-d created this world as it is in order that there be independent beings of free will to earn reward or punishment (never mind exactly why G-d would want that). G-d is, indeed, a free-willed being. So to him, the world, with all the complexity that we perceive, is a simple notion which is already extant within G-d: free will. The complexity of it from the physical perspective is not reflected on the spiritual level.

Now, I’m not saying with certainty that that’s how the whole thing works, I’m merely using this as an understandable illustration of how the simplicity of G-d may not be irreconcilable with the complexity of the universe.

Chaim Mattis Keller

CMKeller:

Yes, complex things can arise out of simple processes. Evolution is an example of complexity arising out of a mindless process. The computer example you give is good. Complex things can arise from a simple computer program. But remember that a computer cannot think.

But the question is whether a thinking, planning, designer of the universe be simple and undifferentiated? My only model of an intelligent being is human beings, who are clearly complex. When a human conceives of something, he is able to have many differnt ideas about the thing, many differnt attitudes and feelings towards it, and describe the thing’s properties. Our ideas of a thing can be as complex as the thing itself.

I don’t see how the fact that the being is spiritual makes any difference. “Spiritual” has to be defined or described for it to be used in any rational argument. One has to explain how something’s spirituality makes any difference. Otherwise, any argument could be refuted by creating an undefined concept and saying that an argument fails because of the concept’s application to the argument. It must be stated how the concept applied to the argument to defeat it. To defeat argument X, I could create a concept Y-osity and say that the argument fails becuase of Y-osity. But it is clear that Y-osity does not damage the argument – I have to define Y-osity and explain why it applies to the argument for it to make any difference.

So what is spirituality/a purely spiritual being and why does the spiritual nature of this being change anything?

Daniel Shabasson:

It doesn’t necessarily have to be positively defined. The crux of the matter is what this being is not, i.e., physical. In (Orthodox) Judaic belief, G-d is a completely non-physical being.

Now, it seems that my attempted example hasn’t quite helped illustrate my point. Let me try a different tactic (although it’s not a perfect analogy, but I’ve got to try):

Picture yourself looking at a marble. From your perspective, it’s extremely simple…a small, solid sphere. However, a paramecium in the air near the marble would have quite a different perspective. It would sense crevices and canyons, changes of landscape, etc. Its different scale and different senses make the level of complexity of the object different.

Or picture yourself looking at a piece of cloth that someone had worn. Again, to you, a simple object. Yet a bloodhound senses that object as a complex stew of odors that enable it to trace the previous wearer in a crowd.

G-d, being a non-physical being, perceives things in a different way than physical beings perceive other physical beings. Physical beings define other physical beings by their physical characteristics…size, shape, color, chemical composition, mass. Differences in these qualities lead to levels of complexity. A non-physical being (perhaps) does not define other objects by such characteristics. In this model, the entire universe might be defined by a single characteristic, e.g., capable of supporting free will, and the physical aspects of this, complex though they may seem to us physical beings, are actually completely simple as perceived through such senses.

I hope this does a better job explaining what I had meant.

Chaim Mattis Keller

In the examples you gave, the paremecium and the dog, each being perceives different characterisics of things based on the beings differing abilitites to perceive. But surely, all of the characterisics of the things exist – it is just a question of which characterisic is visible to which being. The smells in the cloth exist even if we as weak nosed humans cannot detect them without using a machine or sophisticated chemical tests.

Surely, the things in this world exist whether there is a being that can perceive them or not. For example, the world does not cease to have a multitude of things in it or different characteristics and properties because a rock or a tree is unable to perceive them.

So if God is unable to perceive these things, the complexity of the world, it does not mean that the complexity does not exist.

Now, God may well see the world as a simple, uncomplex thing. But then God is either blind or stupid, because the complexity is there. If God is like a tree, he cannot be said to have intelligently designed the world.

What if God sees the world differently but at the same time intelligently, as you suggest? I think you are suggesting that there is a simple unifying principle that explains the complexity we see. God only sees this principle. But I don’t think this works for the following reason. First of all, God is supposed to be omniscient,so I don’t think he can be constrained in the way he views the world – he can see it in any way he pleases. More importantly, if God cannot envision the complexity that is created through this principle, how can he be said to have really intended the complexity he created? If he cannot know me as an individual distinct from other people, how can he really be my creator?

A physicist may understand all of the laws of nature. But if he cannot apply these laws to see how specific results can come from application of the formulas to concrete situations, he really doesn’t know physics after all.

Daniel, you are speaking about God’s vision of complexity from your perspective. God is said to look at us as separate beings as well. You allow yourself many layers of sensing the universe. Why do you not allow the Divine to perceive the universe in many other layers and perspectives, those we cannot fathom yet, including one that can allow the Divine to: perceive distinctions among millions micro-organisms on a hair follicle, hear a rock concert, make sure the comet about to pass an inhabited planet will not jepoardize that planet, and analyze the rammifications of a supernova 100 light years away, all at the same time? This is probably just a small portion of what the Divine can handle that very instant.

Randomness being a god is not quite a facetious a statement as Lemur depicts it. You insist that the universe, this planet and the organisms that live on it must be created by a bunch of fortuitous random sequences, just as religious people tend to think it has a more organized, Divine origin. You think that the only constant in life and the universe is change, and that no man-made God can govern change, just as religious people say the same about the Divine being constant. In a similar way that belief in The Divine, and figuring out what the Supreme Being has in store for us and expect of us, influence the religious in their approach to problems, so does belief in constancy of randomness, and the quest to find patterns and constant equations among randomness, influence the way many scientists approach the problems they solve. The only difference is that random or change is not personified among scientists today.

Capacitator

I’m a litle unsure as to what your post is in reply to. Is it to my last post or the first post? To someone else’s post?

I never presumed that God didn’t exist, nor that the world had to come from randomness.

Daniel, The first section was a replying to your last quote.

The second one was a reply to this exchange:

capacitor: To those who believe in evolution: is Randomness your god?

Lemur866’s reply:
Capacitor:
Don’t be stupid. I believe that evolution accounts for the existance of humans. But I don’t worship evolution. Evolution is not a god. And evolution does not work solely through random processes. Mutation is random, but natural selection is not random. I don’t worship anything.

BTW to Lemur: the factors and circumstances that determine natural selection are randomized as well. Mankind has the ability to make the randomness in the environment deviate less frequently, or if that’s not possible, mitigate the harmful effects to such violent changes in the environment. Of course mankind can and have achieved the direct opposite as well.

Daniel Shabasson:

Bing! Bing! Bing! We have a winner! That’s exactly what I was saying. Now, to respond to your objections:

Not necessarily. Omniscient means he knows everything. That doesn’t define how he perceives it. A deaf man watching a piano player plink on a keyboard can tell you whether the notes the pianist is playing are high or low. He does not perceive it by hearing it, but he knows it.

Because the principle defines, in detail, how it is executed. It only seems complex to us because we only see its component parts, without perceiving the principle that underlies it. Knowing that principle makes the details known…but not complex.

Chaim Mattis Keller

CMKeller:

You draw a distinction between knowledge and perception. You give the example of the piano and the deaf man. The analogy is odd. The piano player and the deaf man both peceive different notes and know there are different notes. The knowledge of the difference in the notes played corresponds to a perception of different notes played for both the player and the deaf man.

Apply the analogy to God: we say that God perceives the different things in the world but does so in a differnt way. But he DOES perceive that there exist the different things in the world (through some other unknown way of perception) and then comes to know about these differnt things. We are back to my original point: If God knows about these different things, he must have an idea that correspondes to each of them. If he cannot distinguish between them, how can he really be said to know about them?

The piano player analogy says no more than that we can learn about reality using different senses and using different methods. It does not follow that the fact about the world that is known is a different fact simply because one comes to know it through a different method. A fact that is complex is just as complex if we hear it or see it. If you hear two different notes and I see two different note, we both know that two different notes were played – we know the same fact. God’s different manner of perceiving will not change the fact that God ends up knowng the same facts about the world that we do.

So the real question is how God as a KNOWER can know the fact in a different way than we do. It seems to me that he must have a disting idea representing ever different fact, things and property in the world.

CMKeller:

Re: God’s omniscience.

If God is still an active force in the world (he did not create the world and then withdraw from being an active force in the world) then it seems he must be somewhat complex because it is his nature to be involved in the world at different times in different ways. He has the property of relating to the world in certain ways at certain times. But if he relates in different ways at different times to the world he created, he cannot be completely simeple, since he takes different actions, makes different decisions, and acts in different ways at different times. The actions he takes must correspond to the changing state of the world. So he must know about the change. He must know that the world is different at time T and T+ 1 minute.