Remember our discussion on your unwarranted assumptions usually being wrong, Stu? You are making one here. I neither said nor implied anything about tossing out or accepting an idea.

Shush....they'll toss you out of the atheist club if you admit the universe suggests the existence of an intelligent creator.....you'll be out on the curb with Sklansky.

No, they'll just refuse to renew his club card for one year.

No more assumptions for you. The entire point of the post was that you could not draw that conclusion from the situation. That does not imply you can conclude the opposite from it.

So what is your position regarding this thread? Is it right to automatically lump the origin of the universe into the set of naturalistic processes?

Maybe. I think it is certainly the most likely explanation. Not because I reject your OP as evidence of a creator though.

If the order had absolutely no meaning to me (as any other random order doesn't) then obviously I wouldn't assume it was the work of intelligence.

And here we're at the point where we have to mention that the order of the universe and "creation" has meaning to the theist.

Perhaps this will be the "aha" moment of clarity?

I'd bet on no, but I'll take odds on yes.

I don't see how this deck analogy is relevant.

The fact I know that decks are frequently arranged like this and occur in this order randomly very rarely means I have good reason to think one is far far more likely than the other.

If I knew for a fact that Gods produce Universes all the time but very rarely they occur by chance then it would be more reasonable to think that a God made this one.

The low entropy state at the beginning of the universe doesn't suggest God because it doesn't suggest anything.

"Sh*t happens" is maybe a vague implication I could draw from it?

"If God was not in doubt then his work would probably not be in doubt."

Yeah. I guess I can agree with you on that. It's a lovely hypothetical.

Why does this make me think you're really high (not that I would frown upon you for that, it's a wonderful pastime)?

The reason a sequenced deck has meaning to me is precisely because I know of many situations in which it's done. I've witnessed it done intentionally many times.

I don't think this is in any way analagous to God. I definitely haven't directly witnessed Gods ordering things before my eyes..

The meaning has to be established before the order is set in order for it to have any relevance. You don't shuffle up the cards, look at the order, and then call that particular order special and deduce that it was probably intelligently arranged. There is no 'aha' moment, you just aren't understanding why the argument is invalid.

Don't know exactly why you'd think that, but having said that: You either a) misunderstood me, or b) overlooked something.

What I meant initially was assume you have no knowledge whatsoever of a deck of cards, what they look like, how they're ordered, whatever. But I think you've got the gist of it.

Never mind, then.

Could you restate that argument, please? I'm not sure I follow which argument you're referring to exactly.

My argument is a straightforward one saying that not knowing anything about the universe and assigning that event to chance is similar to not knowing anything about a deck of cards and assigning that event (perfect order) to chance, except for the obvious point that one is on a ridiculously smaller scale by comparison.

1) We know of the existence of a mechanism that orders things like cards (humans). We do not know of the existence of a mechanism that orders things like universes (gods). Knowledge of the existence of humans and their tendencies is how we can make the deduction about the cards.

2) There is no reason to assume that our universe is analogously 'perfectly ordered.'

3) There is not even reason to assume that our universe is some stastical improbability like that of a shuffled deck (in any order).

This is false. States of disorder are more prevalent than states of order.

But the "perfect order" of the deck of cards is only "perfect" because you are placing some meaning upon it. In this case it would be the significance of numerical order (and then J,Q,K) and suit.

Without knowledge of cards or their meaning, this "perfect order" would be indistinguishable from any other random order. You would have no idea that Q is a higher value than J.

You can't remove our frame of reference whilst still imagining these things would be significant.

In universes? I meant there is no reason to think that there is a wide variety of potential orders into which a universe could fall. There is no reason to think that our order is not standard.

Thats correct there are tremendous amount of order our universe could be in. It just happened to start out in an exceedly well ordered one.

It seems to me you are suggesting that there really is no difference between order and disorder except in the eye of the beholder. This is incorrect. You can't have a universe if reality is highly disordered.

Pretty sure that I covered this with "sh*t happens".

Woah, woah, woah. You can't say that there are a tremendous amount of possible ways the universe could be and then in the next breath say it has to be ordered in a certain manner.

The cards are just an analog and the quality you are focusing on doesn't apply to the universe. All states are not of equal order except when someone places value on a particular one and calls it the correct one(like with the particular sequence of a deck of cards) as you suggest. The kind of order were talking about with regards to the universe isn't something subjective.

Can you demonstrate this?

There is nothing more 'special' about a life permitting universe vs. a non life permitting universe other than the fact that one appeals to you while the other does not.

But there is a big difference between a universe and diffuse vacuum of unusable energy.

Any thing you can call a universe is in a relatively low state of entropy(something the math indicates is exceedingly rare).

One is no more intrinsically special than the other. The difference is you have a preference for one.

The difference is in the rare well ordered ones there is existence.

We'll just ignore that you cannot demonstrate that these are rare. But, again, the only reason 'existence' is 'special' is because you have a preference for it.