I Know That God Does Not Exist

Extraordinarily complex results can come from quite simple basic stuff.The incredible variety of the Periodic Table is built from protons, neutrons and electrons.Snowflakes are built from some geometric rules of crystallization.Saturn's rings are an enormously complex kinetic system built by gravitational attraction.In mathematics the Monster Group, with just under ten to the fifty-fourth elements is a gem of complexity that is the result of a few simple rules.No, "complexity implies intelligence" is not an idea worthy of any merit.

You're not going to look at the examples I gave you, of complexity coming from non-intelligent simplicity and then say, "Oh, but these other things couldn't possibly have simple foundations"? Are you?

The phrase "can't be simulated" is the essence of the idea that out of simplicity comes complexity without the need for an intelligent agency.

But then, of course, you have to answer the question of how this "intelligent agency" came to exist. At least, you have to wonder if the agency could develop from non-intelligent origins.But if it could, then why couldn't a simpler thing, a universe without intelligence (but with neutrons, protons, electrons, etc), develop out of non-intelligent origins?

I was using protons, neutrons and electrons making up the Periodic Table as an example of complexity (the chemical properties of the Periodic Table) that one would not expect from descriptions of elementary particles that make up the atoms. There's no reason to think the complexity you spoke of is not the result of some deeper level, as protons, neutrons and electrons are at a deeper level than the chemicals they make up.Complexity is not evidence of intelligent origin. If it were, intelligence itself would have to have an intelligence existing before it to develop it, which is a contradiction.

I didn't specify any particular intelligence.I just said if you have to have an intelligence in existence before intelligence can develop you've developed yourself a contradiction.

And if God Himself were to say such a thing he would immediately vanish in a cloud of logic?

I'm not asking you how your god came to be. You obviously believe it did.But your god is obviously a more complex thing than our little planet Earth, or even than all of our sciences of physics, chemistry, etc.You seem to think that all the complexity of such a thing as the laws of physics must be the result of some intelligent agency.But then you must also believe that your god is itself the result of some intelligent agency.

I've given examples of how extraordinarily complex results can come from quite simple basic stuff. Do you think those examples are fantasies?

You're missing the point. It's not the origin of your god that's the issue, it's the fact that you believe that complexity and intelligence cannot develop naturally. So you believe that intelligence cannot develop without there being intelligence in the first place. That gives a contradiction!

Two things then. First, "not restricted to linear time" sounds like something out of C. S. Lewis or A. A. Attanasio, an issue of belief or fantasy rather than rational thought (at least until science is doing more than "speculating")Second, new living organisms have been observed to evolve without intelligent intervention. Why should it have been different in the past?

There is no intelligent agency carving those beautiful snowflakes from ice crystals, why should there be an intelligent agency carving out the laws of chemistry and physics that produce those snowflakes?Humans have always looked at the world and seen an intelligent agency where there really was none, from Hephaestus as the reason for volcanoes belching lava and fire to modern-day conspiracy theories.The deeper we look, year after year, the more we find natural origins as answers to scientific questions. Hypothesizing an intelligent agency somewhere "at the bottom of all of this" doesn't lead to anything that can be objectively checked, just an ever-receding nebulous object of faith.

Ah, but there's a difference between saying that there is nothing beyond natural processes and we have zero evidence that there is something beyond natural processes.I've seen no evidence that there are unicorns living on some planet orbiting a nearby star. I've also seen no proof that such unicorns are nonexistent.But for now, it makes more sense to ignore any possibility that they exist, just as it makes more sense to ignore any possibility that some hazy Oz-like intelligent entity is behind the curtain of time and scientific laws, pulling strings and pushing buttons because we have a vague feeling that it couldn't just simply be natural processes after all.

You claim, "I contend that the existence of the natural processes themselves constitute evidence." But there's nothing behind this claim. Ever since humans began to try to understand the universe they tried both natural and supernatural explanations for various phenomena.So far the count is: supernatural - 0, natural - several zillion.Persisting in the non-natural view is not a reasonable way of thinking. It may, of course, turn out that we will someday discover such an explanation. But until then...

Beyond the purview? Who knows? Perhaps some day there will be a scientific explanation for such things as why there are three spatial dimensions, why mass and inertia are so closely linked, why there is an imbalance between matter and anti-matter in the universe . . .