The immensity of the universe (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Wednesday, January 27, 2016, 18:08 (3005 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: As I noted above. He either created a process which gave the proper final results, or He carefully directed every desired result. Either works for me. He was always in control.
Dhw: Since no one can read your God's mind, how does anyone know what are the “proper final results”? But I quite like the idea of your God creating a process and NOT carefully directing every desired result, since it fits in perfectly with the hypothesis that he created an autonomous inventive intelligence that produced the vast higgledy-piggledy history of evolution. Similarly, as far as the cosmos is concerned, your comment allows for him to have set off the whole “process” of solar systems and individual stars appearing and disappearing, and to have left it entirely to chance to put all the elements together, since he knew that if he created an infinite number of such systems, eventually one of them would give “the proper final results”. That also fits in perfectly with atheism: given an infinite number of combinations, eventually you are bound to get life and evolution. But then you don't have to call it the proper or desired result. Just the result we have.-DAVID: Doesn't fit with atheism at all. All they revel in is chance, nothing directed. I feel it is all directed somehow.-It is the “somehow” that causes the problems. The intricacy of living organisms seems to me to offer a powerful case for belief in design, which you always present with the utmost clarity. The immensity of the universe is a very different proposition, and is a major factor in my non-belief (not disbelief). If your God didn't carefully direct every result, he must have left a lot to chance. But I simply don't buy the hypothesis that a single unsourced mind created billions of solar systems and blew up millions of stars in order to get the ingredients of life to land on Planet Earth, where he put them together in order to produce us. We must also bear in mind that solar systems and supernovae continue to come and go, and presumably will carry on doing so. “I feel it is all directed somehow” is no counter to the “infinite number of combinations” argument, which does fit in with atheism, but not with your beliefs as to how your God works. This is not an attack on those beliefs, but an attempt to explain why they are too irrational for me to accept. Unlike the complexities of life, “feel...somehow” is not a very convincing argument.