First, a title should be a title not the first half of the opening line.
Moving on, the universe did not evolve. Life evolves. The universe just happened. Maybe you ask how the universe happened. How did it start from nothing? Where did it come from? What caused it to happen?
Good questions. But ask the same questions about the Intelligent Being. How did the Intelligent Being start from nothing? Where did the Intelligent Being come from? What caused the Intelligent Being to happen?
Any answer you come up with that explains the origin of the Intelligent Being can also be used to explain the origin of the universe.
The thoughts of atheists, agnostics, and believers are not random. They are responses to stimuli. You don’t randomly think “I am cold” - your nervous system notes that the portion of the universe which is in your immediate vicinity has a low temperature. And so on. You are the sum of all of the inputs you have received from outside of yourself.
The universe created you. Nothing created the universe. You are trying to create God.
What you’re saying boils down to “it’d be really nice if there was a God, because then the universe would make sense”. That’s not an argument. That is - quite literally - simply wishful thinking.
This isn’t true. Let me try an analogy. Consider a simple thermometer. It is a completely physical entity. It doesn’t have any non-physical consciousness or free will or anything like that. All it does is follow the laws of physics.
Does that mean the temperature it shows is just completely random? No. It can show an accurate temperature because it is a physical object connected to the world around it. It interacts with the world around it, so the state of the world affects the state of the thermometer.
Thinking is kind of like that. Your brain interacts with the world around it and its state is affected by the state of the world. You can see a computer screen right now because it is emitting photons which are received by your eyes, which send signals to your brain which makes your brain perceive a computer screen. Your thoughts aren’t random because you aren’t disconnected from the rest of the world.
Imagine if our thoughts really were random…most people would probably just starve within a month, just because they didn’t happen to think “I should eat” over a week-long span.
I am, I guess what you could call an unhappy agnostic, as a result of this issue. It drives me absolutely nuts that human existence makes no sense. Even with a god, it makes no sense. I have to conclude there is something profound about the nature of the universe (or existence, or whatever) that we don’t know, because for something to exist forever is not possible and is at the same time the only explanation.
I am maddened by the fact that we will probably never understand.
I’m trying to figure out if you are bastardizing Plantinga, Lewis, or Rappart (sp?).
In any event, it’s completely unclear what you mean by ‘evolutionary manner’ in context since evolution is generally used to explain biological diversity.
Isn’t this based on, in part, the “random beneficial mutation” bits?
[QUOTE=Evolution: Frequently Asked Questions]
7. Is evolution a random process?
Evolution is not a random process.** The genetic variation on which natural selection acts may occur randomly,** but natural selection itself is not random at all. The survival and reproductive success of an individual is directly related to the ways its inherited traits function in the context of its local environment. Whether or not an individual survives and reproduces depends on whether it has genes that produce traits that are well adapted to its environment.
[/QUOTE]
No doubt, but as that quote makes clear it misrepresents what evolution actually is. The production of new genes by mutations may be random, but most aspects of evolution aren’t random at all.
How would you know that? The only way somebody could know would be if they had always existed to witness the Intelligent Being. Who was that? A second Intelligent Being?
Did something create the Intelligent Being? If not, then the Intelligent Being exists without a creator. If the Intelligent Being doesn’t need a creator to exist, why does the universe need a creator to exist? Maybe the universe exists without a creator.
But let’s assume for the sake of argument that the Intelligent Being did create the universe. What did the Intelligent Being do then? The universe exists now. What if the Intelligent Being disappeared after creating the universe? Just because the Intelligent Being existed when the universe was created doesn’t mean it exists now.
The first life on this planet wasn’t intelligent. It’s gained intelligence over time, by innumerable minute changes.
You seem to think that people just crawled from the ooze. Also, there is no necessity that something can’t be smarter than what made it. If we ever make an AI, it will be smarter than what made it. Also, there is no reason to assume that we are the result of an intelligence.
You have no basis to make that assertion.
If we were created by an intelligence, there is no reason for it to have existed from the beginning of time. Humanity is around 200 thousand years old. If you want to assume Earthy life in general as what a creator made, life on Earth is three and a half billion years old.
There is no reason a creator God would need to be older than that.