I did not read everything, but I eventually will and will respond to what I have a opinion on.
One thing that stands out to me though is that immediately it seems like the argument style known as “ god of the gaps and improbable coincidences”.
To me a worthy intelligent design argument can’t rely on what we dont yet understand and can’t rely on something we think is highly unlikely, despite could have happened another way. Instead it must rely on we know for sure this can’t just happen this way and it requires supernatural powers to occur.
To begin there are already tons of responses about how mutations account for part of natural selection and evolution. There is also plenty of speculation that supports the possibility of other worlds that may have life or be habitable. With evolution we see multiple sciences all supporting it. We see morphological basal and divergent traits that are then supported by genetics. But what we see is also supported by what we don’t see. We don’t anything other than evolution occurring.
Only 5 so far, and we may be in the middle of a sixth.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
73
What fine tuning?
Which is it? And which scientists?
Easily obtained in the one to ten trillion worlds in our galaxy alone.
You can’t have the latter without the former. And evolution becomes an analogy in all pre- and post-genetic environments including the eternal, infinite multiverse and religion.
1692 isn’t recent. And God cannot be the first cause prior to the eternity of nature; only in terms of prevenient unimaginable, incalculable, unnecessary complexity. So how many of the at least trillion worlds of our galaxy of at least a hundred billion are left by the suggestion? Just the one? Wow! Out of a trillion, trillion worlds. How rational is that? Ah, your sources say ‘calculated by some scientists as one in trillion-trillion-trillions’, so we’re special by one in a trillion even by being alone in the entire universe. That rational.
More like 10 big ones (probably a few in the Precambrian, two in the Cambrian, O-S, D-C, Cenomanian, P-T, T-J, K-T, and current) and dozens of small ones.
I don’t think you have a full understanding of how common mutations are in coding regions. I took a quick look at the human gene MMP3 and I count over 500 known missense mutations in that gene alone. Most of them are rare and many are tolerated just fine.
Then those scientists are wrong. The chances of humans having those mutations is 1 in 1, because it happened. What you are falling for is called the Sharpshooter fallacy. No matter which mutations occurred the chances of those specific mutations is 1 in trillion and trillions. The very process of evolution guarantees that we will see extremely unlikely outcomes.
These basic mistakes alone cast serious doubt on the reliability of your opinion. I can address your other claims if you wish.
I’m under the impression the multiverse is suspected as a potential byproduct of quantum mechanics and cosmic inflation.
But to be clear. I don’t know enough about quantum anything let alone physics and mechanics , and I have no idea what the science for inflation. I’m just parroting what I see as various things I’ve read, though by scientists on it.
if it’s not a secret, what are these reasons? I am experiencing a crisis of faith, so the opinions of other believers are very important to me. thanks.
Even if there were (hypothetically) multiverses, that would not incapacitate the God who is from providential intervention, as Herr Doktor @Klax’s straitjacketed one is. Multiverse theory is also preferable to nontheists, because it allows there to be no beginning.
Read Maggie’s testimony, and maybe follow the advice given at the end of Tim Keller’s book:
During a dark time in her life, a woman in my congregation complained that she had prayed over and over, “God, help me find you,” but had gotten nowhere. A Christian friend suggested to her that she might change her prayer to, “God, come and find me. After all, you are the Good Shepherd who goes looking for the lost sheep.” She concluded when she was recounting this to me, “The only reason I can tell you this story is—he did.”
As Maggie’s testimony demonstrates, God can providentially intervene without breaking any natural laws. He is sovereign over time and place and timing and placing. People who pooh-pooh God’s providence could think that someone could win five lotteries in a day without something being rigged, and then someone else the next day.
Is the question “‘why do I believe in God despite not personally believing in any concrete evidence for his existence?”
No secrets on my end. At least not about my faith.
It’s definitely understandable that if someone is raised up to believe in a perfect Bible without flaws in a world where science clearly points towards a creator and then they find themselves realizing some of the gaps in the Bible snd they realize how ID and YEC just seems to always fall short to suddenly find themselves deconstructing their faith and struggling. It’s very common and almost everyone goes through through phases to various degrees.
For me the things that mostly help me are rather simple arguments.
Science does not know everything. We don’t really understand cosmic inflation, multiverses and so on. It’s so grand it goes beyond what we can figure out at the moment. Even if a multiverse is proven and it explains our particular universe it simply pushes back the question of where did the multiverse comes from? How did cosmic inflation begin. If you keep backtracking “ where did this come from “ science eventually starts hitting “ we don’t know right now”. I personally do find God in gaps and I do find God in unlikely coincidences. It seems like it’s a forever door that God can life in. But this is no evidence. It’s faith. I can’t prove in orbs exists by pointing to the fact that someone can’t say they don’t exist in another dimension. There lack of answers does not mean my answer is true or evidence. But nonetheless in the gaps of science and history I fill them in with Yahweh through faith.
This is a other issue of faith. I feel something calling. I feel a tug at my soul and it won’t go away. No matter the doubt I face, there is this tugging, pushing and pulling towards God. I simply believe in a higher power. I understand people from every faith can make that claim. At times I feel a tug towards other things. But I always find myself back on Yahweh. I can’t shake him. No matter how much doubt there is. No matter how much peer pressure there is. No matter how equally convinced others are of something different t I find myself drawn towards God. I have faith that it is the Holy Spirit searching my heart and influencing it.
This is also a issue of faith. Ive experienced things in my life thst I believe are miracles. Not miracles like those shown by the laying on of hands where a man howls like a beast and breaks steel and tosses people around only to be silenced and healed by words. It’s not a corpse sitting back up taking in air and it’s not stage four cancers being healed instantly by finger tips. Instead I’ve had a few prayers and coincidences happen that seems as if it’s directed by the supernatural. One on one I can come up with statistics on coincidences. I could possibly explain away each one. But the sheer number leaves me to istead place faith in God.
So ultimately it’s looking at the world through the lens of faith.!
That’s a little outdated (maybe 20 years). There are five really big ones with enough data to be obvious: the Precambrian ones are speculative, the Cambrian ones were only recognized within the last five years, and the end Cenomanian one blurs into the P-T boundary.
I’m always a bit curious about the various debates of mass extinctions and how much of it was major die offs versus how much of it was simply better fossil making environments and times.
Most of the extinctions also are centered on animals.
Do y’all have any info concerning how quantum sciences could play into a way God could manipulate a extinction?
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
99
Information is the problem (and the processing of it…). There is nothing that breaks the statistical surface. No signal in the noise. You’re not suggesting that God would cause Chicxulub of course, that would make Him infinitely worse than Satan, as usual, but that by altering what would have been the spins of electrons by His foreknowledge of those absolutely uncertain events, He made sure a particular rat survived that wouldn’t have done otherwise and here we are?
That’s essentially how I see it but I wanted to remove any biased set ups as much as possible in my question. But ultimately I think we agree that there is no evidence for fine tuning in anyway. You can look at all the coincidences and use faith as a thread connecting them but thread will always only be theologically and philosophically and never scientific.
1 Like
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
106
Real faith can have nothing whatsoever to do with nature, is in spite of nature. To make nature subject to faith, change, to conform to faith, is just cognitive bias and degrades, devalues, demeans both. Is mere superstition.