you can always add god in on top of everything...

when we say we don't know we are saying we don't know the cause of something in our universe...this is the same reason that evolution doesn't disprove god...we figured out the cause of different species etc in our universe = evolution...you can still say "god did it like that"...the problem is that saying "god did it" doesnt change anything, we didn't explain anything...

Good point ...

As Aaron W pointed out, God is not a mechanism.

First of all, there are many many small typos in my message, including 1/6 for the number of outcomes for 6 flips. Thanks for catching that.

If we read your message in reverse, starting with your last line, we can stop right there! You are assuming that human life is special and is the goal of the of the universe (roughly speaking; not trying to put words into your mouth), and I am not.

I think you are only one tiny step away from claiming that the ultimate purpose of the universe is you personally. And similarly that you personally are so important that the entire universe and everything in it, and in fact something much greater than the universe which created it, cares about you and thinks you are special. But then, I guess you probably openly believe some of that, to some extend. Anyway, I guess I'm saying that psychologically it all seems closely related. And I don't buy any of it.

If you are going to start with the premise that the human race is the iron coin, you might as well start with the premise that god(s) exist, created the universe, etc.

i don't recall that exchange, i don't read every thread...but that is kind of my point (if i understand correctly)...when you say "god did it" that doesn't explain anything, even if we grant that god is the umbrella for everything and everything is done ultimately by him...there is still some mechanism, in our universe, by which things are accomplished...

so we can say spacetime curvature causes gravity rather than just saying "god did it"...even if god created spacetime

we can say evolution causes different species...even if god created/directs evolution

I think we are reaching an impasse here, but isn"t it natural for humans to question the reason of their existence? Fact: We exist. Question: Why and how and what for? I think this is the quintessential human question.

We both agree that no one knows if there could be any other variations in our universe, we can only look back to the singularity. But asking how the singularity started, what caused it, and where the matter came from is a genuine question on both sides. To wonder whether or not an external agent caused it/created it is not preposterous.

If you hold this view, then you should understand why "God did it" is such a horrible answer when we don't know something. We are simply committing the argument from incredulity fallacy. If God exists then maybe we'll find him someday or maybe we won't. Appealing to him whenever we hit an intellectual brick wall is not how we're going to find him.

I can't speak for everyone, but in the 15+ years I've been using the phrase "God of the gaps" it has never been for the purpose of disproving the existence of any proposed god(s), nor for the purpose of proving that no god(s) exist.

You are not the first person I've seen recently making this implication, however, so I'm glad it came up here and I can address it.

It is essentially a metaphor for "your God is not all that awesome if all he does is explain unexplainable mysteries," and "in fact, your God is getting weaker as science marches on."

It is derogatory, but not mean spirited. I wouldn't expect any true believer to describe the god(s) they believe in as a "God of the gaps." However, from time to time, throughout history and in the present day, people make a variety of claims that amount to a denial of scientific findings. This is the context in which it arises. As in, creationists claiming that God made humans, they did not occur by natural processes. But then evolution is bolstered by 150 years of scientific progress... and now God doesn't live there anymore, so He gets weaker/smaller. And presumably, in this conversation, the believer is making the claim that their god(s) are strong and grant, so this appears to be a bit of a contradiction. Bla bla bla, I feel like I'm trying to over-explain this. The point is, if you try to say that god(s)s exist in the physical worlds in places that are too small to see, in phenomena that we don't fully understand, and in places too distant to observe, etc., then your god(s) are by definition not all that great because if/when we gain dominance over those realms, your god(s) are diminished (assuming we don't find them there).

Like I said, it is a metaphor. That is at least a decent launching point; I'm quite happy to have someone else jump in and correct and/or fill in the blanks... I'm not feeling very eloquent at the moment.

It depends how you look at it. For the Christian it can be bolstering and awe-inspiring, as science is not discovering anything new, merely understanding and observing what God has already created. The further science marches on, the stronger my faith becomes.

Yes it is natural for humans to ask the "why question" when it comes to our existence, the universe, etc. That doesn't mean this question makes any sense when applied to these subjects. Perhaps we're programed to ask the "why question" all the time because this way of thinking was advantageous to our ancestors and one of the side effects to this successful survival strategy is asking the why question when it doesn't apply. A natural consequence of being promiscuous "why askers."

I see nothing wrong with anything you said here. The key is to not draw any conclusions here cause we genuinely don't know. Thus, believing in anything at this point would be intellectually dishonest.

If you had made a simple spelling error, it would be possible that you understood your writing.

If you had understood the phrases you used, you would have written:

for all intents and purposes, statistically impossible or at least improbable.

This kind of mistake makes it look like you are parroting an argument or person you don't understand, but you want to sound smart. People in marketing and middle managers talk like this to hide their ignorance.

Answers must be explanations in science. Therefor, all magical answers are not allowed, because they don't explain anything. If I ask "How is an elevator created", and you answer "an engineer designed it, and some construction workers built it", that's not an explanation. If you pull out a sheet of paper and a slide rule, and draw diagrams of pulleys and blueprints for an elevator, that's a more satisfying explanation. Or if you could teach a class, "Elevator Design 101" where students build model elevators, then that's even better.

When someone says "God created the world, then created the animals and man", that is not an explanation that is of any use to me. It's saying God magicked it into existence. Science has no special bias against God, science won't accept any magic explanations. Science cannot help that Yahweh is the most popular contemporary magical explanation.

Welcome to the atheist's club. Glad to have you as a member. Your hat and stickers are in the mail.

Science doesn't refute the idea there there is a "god", but it simply says that God is not allowed to be an answer only when he is used as an explanation for anything.

The only thing that could probably be described as a god is whatever created the entire universe and sparked it in the very first moment, but that literally cannot be explained so far by any logic we have, and is so far beyond humanity that any explanation we have serves that entity a grave injustice.

I have no idea.

I am not trying to answer any question here. Please follow what I am saying.

Again, I am simply refuting the claim that "the universe is fine-tuned for life and it is extremely improbable that the universal constants would be what they are." That is nonsense because there is absolutely nothing we can say about the probability that a universe would be this way.

I agree.

You make a very interesting leap here. You first talk about how me saying an engineer and construction worker created the elevator is not an explanation. First off, I would disagree. It is an explanation (albeit not complete). You then move on to say that a diagram and blueprints would be what you want. and that would be more satisfying. A diagram and blueprints would not be an explanation, they would be a description of what is happening, not why it is happening. So the diagram and blueprints would be a very unsatisfying answer if you did not already have the answer of "a engineer and construction worker" to go along with it.

If I told you that there were no humans involved and that no one built the elevator and just left you with a description (the diagram and blueprint) and told you that "it just is", you would call me ******ed.

You are likening God to the engineer and construction worker, then claiming that this is just magic. Is this really how you believe elevators are built, engineer and construction worker magic? Really?

But this is not a god of the gaps. This is a god who is responsible for everything, whether we understand it or not, whether we see his hand in it or not.

This is the type of god that is not subject to the god of the gaps criticism. That isn't to say I don't think it is still an obvious fairy tale, I'm just saying that this particular weakness does not apply. In particular, this god is unfalsifiable, when mysteries are evidence of his glory, and mysteries solved are also further evidence of his glory. But I digress.

If, on the other hand, you were to say, "Sure, science can explain the diversity of life, but where is science when it comes to the origin of life? I'll tell you where, it is cowering in fear, busy denying God, when it knows in its heart full well that it can never figure that one out, because God did that one," that would be a god of the gaps. That is the type of argument that you could take backwards in history, and apply to lightning, or disease, or crop failure, etc., and it would be exactly the same argument; except it would no longer be a claim that any one could take seriously. So when people point out that someone's definition of god(s), or description of god(s) attributes starts to look like a god of the gaps, again, that does not imply [therefore you are wrong and it does not exist]. It just means, therefore you are making the type of argument that has failed over and over, and now you are just setting yourself up to fail once again, if/when we discover more and more about the origin of life, or whatever other hole in human understanding you choose to claim is a spot where your god has exclusive dominion.

It looks more and more to me like the term is simply misunderstood, and not actually disagreed about. Especially when you spell it out in writing, most people -- possibly with the exception of some of the regular theist posters on this forum -- would agree that this is not the kind of god they believe is real; they think their god is everywhere, everything, and can do the impossible. (Which of course, seems like a contradiction, but not the point of this message)!

But that's not what you have. What you have is 1 trillion dollars, each one made of a different material. And now that you've chosen the dollar made of iron, you want to claim that iron is the "most special" of all the materials. There is no justification for that.

+1 dat

I couldn't say it better myself.

Of course there are unanswered questions. Nobody has denied that. What we are denying is the claim that the universe appears to be "fine-tuned" to support life. There is no indication of this.

The 1 trillion coins may all be distinct in certain ways, but when we are talking about the characteristic of being "suitable for life" you do indeed have 1 iron coin and 999,999,999,999 other coins.

I was writing fast and mixed the words up.

Thanks for commenting on my intellect.

But each of the trillion coins represents something (where one of them represents "a universe suitable for life"). If you randomly draw one, you are going to get some coin.

Another example is, write down the name of each person on a slip of paper. Then randomly select one of those slips of paper. The paper will correspond to someone. Is that weird? Is that unexpected? Is that a crazily improbable coincidence? Not at all. Some name had to be drawn!

Now, if you are the person whose name is on the paper, you will feel special, or wonder "why me?" or "how could it have been me, of all the billions of people?" etc. Or he or she might say, "The universe must have been fine-tuned to select me, because my odds of being selected are less than 1 in 6,000,000,000!"

So again, taking for granted that our universe could be "randomly tuned" for the purposes of this conversation, the fact that the universe supports life does not mean that it is fine-tuned for that purpose. It just means that we are here. "Human Life" is what was written on the slip of paper, but it could just has easily have been "nothing but black holes."

It is only if you start out with the idea that of the 6,000,000,000+ people, I'm concentrating my mind on Xia Q. Phuc (I don't know asian names, I just wanted to write phuc), I'm concentrating on her alone of all the possible people in the world, now go pick a slip of paper: hey look at that, you picked Xia Q. Phuc. Now that would be amazing, and I might be inclined to doubt that the selection was random, and didn't in fact have something to do with what you were concentrating on.

This is simply a blind assertion. You cannot know this. No one can (at least at this moment no one can and perhaps forever)