Okay, if something has been made it must have a maker. But how do you
know that everything that exists has been made? If you try to say that
its very existence means that it has been made then you are falling into
the fallacy of Thomas Aquinas. He declared that the existence of the
world around us is the evidence of a god. After all, if it is there then
being there must mean that a god put it there. That is a fallacy because
it is circular logic that presupposes the conclusion to reach the
conclusion. Someone once put it to me in another way. He pointed to a
car that drove by and he said the very existence of the car was evidence
of an automobile factory. It is not. We know that cars are made in an
automobile factory because we know about automobile factories. We can go
to them and see them. We can take tours of them. We can get jobs in
them. However, if we did not know about automobile factories we could
not conclude that they existed just on the basis of the existence of a
car. The existence of a car would be a mystery to be solved. If we then
found evidence for the automobile factory while doing our investigation
the mystery would be solved, but we would still need evidence. Now how
can we explain the perfect design of this universe? Well, I do not
accept that it is either designed or that it is perfect. The universe is
simply as it is. You have not expressed it, but that comment shows that
you are coming close to the anthropic principle. That is, how can the
universe be so precisely fine tuned that it has produced human life
while if it had been only slightly different in its universal laws then
life could not have developed? The question is pretty anthropocentric in
the first place. The simple fact is that if the universe had been only
slightly off in its fine tuning then other things would exist that could
not exist in our universe and then you would be asking how is it that
the universe is so fine tuned as to allow those other things to exist.
It is also like saying that isn't it remarkable that the human face is
perfect for holding a pair of spectacles. Well, no, the human face is
not designed for spectacles. The human face is as it is and so
spectacles happen to fit it. Another example is that one might say how
remarkable it is that a depression in the ground fits perfectly the
puddle of water that it contains. Again, the hole was not designed for
the water. The water simply conforms to the hole. similarly life
conforms to the universe and that does not require a design. Ultimately,
the reason and origins of the universe are unknown. Yes, the big bang
has been surmised and further attempts have been made to explain the big
bang which involve branes or a runaway fluctuation in the quantum foam,
but all of these paths of investigation just bring up more questions and
the actual reason for there being something rather than nothing is
unknown. Just because something is unknown it does not mean that the
next step is to make up things about it that have no evidence. If there
is a creator then let the scientific investigations of the origins of
the universe lead us to it. It serves no purpose to just declare a
creator without the evidence for it. There is nothing wrong with saying
that we don't know something when we really don't know it.
On 8/13/2017 3:27 PM, Bob Evans wrote:
Syllogism is deductive reasoning in which a conclusion is derived from
two premises. So rationally, if something has been made, it must then
have had a maker. It could have not made itself, because at first, it
didn't ask.
I will theoretically suppose with you, that a deity doesn't exist.
Then how could we rationally construe the perfect design of this
universe? I urge you not to beat around the bush and think before you
give an answer.
