God.....again.

Because there's no evidence of one. And generally I don't go around believing in the existence of things for which there is no evidence. But like all conclusions from data, I'm tentative about that.God could exist, I guess. There's nothing that, to my knowledge, prevents the existence of God. It's just my conclusion from the data that he doesn't exist at this time. So, given that there's no evidence, I'm absolutely sure that god doesn't exist - but I know I could be wrong. Nature doesn't really have that much rational structure. Unless you'd care to explain why I possess an appendix with no specific function.

To the contrary. I've been looking for some time. I used to be a creationist, you know - and very Christian indeed. But I came to wonder how I could be sure. I started looking for the evidence that everybody said was there, and when I couldn't find it - and I looked for years - I came to realize I couldn't find it because it wasn't there.So, no, I'm not biased towards evolution - I'm biased towards conclusions supported by evidence. That's what being a scientist (and I use the term to describe myself very loosely) means.If you have some evidence for god, I'd love to hear it. Of course you'll have to defend it as I have some pretty rigorous standards for proof. But if your god does exist, he should be able to meet my standards, right? After all I'll accept the same kind of evidence for god's existence as I would accept for your existence.

The laws of nature are apprently constant, I'll give you that. But I'm not sure they're any more reasonable than any other conceivable law. For instance, I can move freely in all three spacial dimensions. Why then can't I move freely in the fourth dimension of time? Seems arbitrary to me.

Because if they weren't that way, we wouldn't be here to ask. The Weak Anthropic principle handles questions like that pretty well, I'd say...It's like asking "What are the odds that my mother would have mated with the exact man to get the genetic material that would make me me?" As you say, it's reasoning backwards. Sorry if that's not enough explanation for you. It is for me.

As I think I've argued before, if I sound like an agnostic, it's because there's no meaningful difference between being an agnostic and being atheist within the scientific framkework of tenativity of knowledge. I'm basically as sure as I can be that there's no god. I think that makes me atheist even though that's not the same as absolutely sure.