If I took apart a Swiss Watch and started throwing the pieces in the air, how long would it take for them to fall all back together and run like a Swiss Watch is suppose to?
The universe isn't like a watch, and neither are living organisms, so this comparison is besides the point.
But to counter your argument on its own terms: How long would you have to throw watch pieces together randomly for a god to emerge? By invoking an intelligent agent that has to be vastly more complex than the universe it created, you didn't solve the problem, you just made it a lot bigger.
It was the order and the mathematics of probability that made me conclude there was something intelligent in the universe
The question is now, why are 98% of physicists, astronomers and biologists in the National Academy of Science atheists (that number is from the early 2000's)?
If the existence of a creator is self-evident in the structure of the universe and living things, how come that the people who know these structures most intimately do not conclude at all that there has to be a creator?
This is an argument from authority, sure, but from legitimate, relevant authority. It's like asking Einstein about Relativity, or a dermatologist about a rash.
what about good and evil?
These are words invented to describe certain behaviours and classify them as either promoting a conflict free herd with a lot of viable offspring, or promoting a herd full of conflict and consequentially less and less viable offspring.
Why does man from the most primitive until know have this innate need to create something that is greater than himself?
Because humans live in hierachically structured societies in which aiming for and maintaining a high status correlates with a high number of highly viable offspring. Selective pressure thus favours individuals whose DNA is such that it strives for high status.
As a species with high intelligence and the ability of imagination we developed intricate cultural rituals and crafts. Since the production of cultural goods is a way to achieve and maintain high status, individuals with a 'talent' do just this. The concurrency between individuals aiming for the same societal niche puts forth bigger and bigger creations.
No gods necessary here.
Why do we love? It is not rational and does not ensure the best decisions when it comes to reproduction or caring of our young? Why do children die or develop disorders if they are not loved? What is love and why does it exist?
Love is a neurochemical state of the brain, just like all other emotions and feelings are. It ensures that we bind to other humans to form a very cohesive group that, through kin-selection, improves the reproductive outcome of the group as a whole - meaning that there will be more humans with cohesion promotin DNA than there will be humans who lack this DNA.
Natural selection isn't rational, too, so mentioning that love is irrational is besides the point. It is enough for love to give a slight overall advantage, or for a population of lovers to get lucky during a population bottleneck for the love genes to become dominant throughout the species.
As for babies developing funny when not given the behavioural feedback that correlates with loving feelings on the side of the mother: Mothering behaviour and child needs coevolve, so both fit together like a colibri beak and a blossom. The child's body needs certain inputs to trigger development. If these inputs are absent, the body doesn't initiate this or that developmental step.
Take for example some other mammals, like rhesus monkeys, skunks, opossums… As babies, they all need something warm and fuzzy and bigger than themselfs that gives them food in order to develop properly. So, mom = something fuzzy, big and food dispensing. That's why orphaned wildlife is perfectly happy with being orphaned, as long as there's food and a stuffed animal to cuddle around. For humans, 'mom' is a bit more complex on the behavioural level, but it comes down to the same basic concept: Mom is not a person but a collection of properties. Any person who has most of these properties will be accepted as mom and offer all the developmental effects.
But I could not find a scientific reason for the existence of love.
That doesn't mean that there isn't one. Not knowing a scientific explanation doesn't mean that you can just plug a god into that gap of understanding.
Simple answers to complex questions, not fully developed.
Complex and completely unnecessary. If the proposal of the existence of gods and devils has such a rat tail of additional problems attached, that wouldn't exist without the proposal, then it's not a helpful proposal to begin with. Adding to that, 'god' has zero explanatory value, so you don't even get something that's woth all the problem you just created.
Why do we all have a need for justice?
For the same reasons that dogs have a basic understanding of fairness and lemurs help each other even if they don't gain anything for themselves immediately: We are a social animal, and social animals are evolved to live together in relatively stable, cooperative groups, and these groups are maintained by brain structures that produce a craving for the behaviours that are beneficial for maintanance.
Why do we love, and hurt so badly when the one's that are suppose to love us don't? Why do we have a conscious? Why do we need meaning and purpose?
Cats act hurt when you make fun of them, they get jealous and they can lie, as can chimps. Elephants display behaviours that are comparable to human mourning behaviour. Gorillas and many other apes carry around their dead infants for days. Whales help sick group members by taking turns at keeping the sick one at the surface. Killer whales have a whole set of pedagogic stragies to teach the young ones how to snatch penguins from the shore.
We mammals all have some kind of psychology, attachment, strategic social behaviour etc. They were either directly bred by selective pressure, or they are by-products of adaptive traits. Nothing supernatural about that, and nothing that even comes near the limits of science's explanatory power.
So many questions and the answers are a personal journey.
I could respect that if this post were about philosophy. But it's about the natural, manifesting world. You don't need a personal journey to find answers to questions concerning that - there are scientists who get paid to find them for you. Just pick up a good text book about the topic (one that wasn't written by apologistis but by scientists working inside the field they're talking about or legitimate science journalists) and voilà, there are your answers.
@Mercy: I only saw your stepping out of the exchange after I typed all this, so I will post it but you don't have to feel obliged to read or reply to it :)
Those are very personal statements that must have felt like an attack, I am so sorry if it read like that to you.
I didn't feel attacked, don't worry. I was pretty sure that you were unaware of the full implications of your words since these kinds of replies have always been presented to you as being respectful while they really are everything but respectful.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all
for lack of respect, but I'm also for being conscious of it.
I don't quite follow the reasoning here. We aren't talking about preserving freewill or some amount of freewill. We have the freewill to choose to become a perp or not.
(emphasis by FON)
That's the point. God lets us choose if we want to be a perp or not. He doesn't let us choose however, if we want to be the victim of a perpetrator or not. God gives all freedom to the evil doers, yet does nothing to protect the freedom of their victims.
When Adam and Eve were tempted by the tree of good and evil, they were sent out of the garden so that they would not be tempted by the tree of immortality.
The god of this narrative sounds a bit kinder than the traditional Bible god. Still I wonder why he created the tree of knowledge in the first place, or put it somewhere where Adam and Eve could reach it. It sounds like he wanted evil to exist, like he wanted people to be unhappy and beaten.
In heaven there is freewill, yet no evil at all. Why didn't he allow Adam and Eve to remain in this state unless he wanted them to suffer?
We don't believe in original sin. We do believe that we live in a fallen world.
How can the world be fallen if there is no original sin? And if humans aren't inherently evil and spoiled, what would you need Jesus for? Didn't he die as a trade off for that? Like, if you believe he's god, god will ignore your original sin and all other sins that you say sorry for?
The one you so eloquently describe would be totally abhorant to me.
I'm glad to hear that :D
Yes, I have thought that too. I was tortured many more times and for much more time than he was. I think sometimes that he got off rather lightly.
So the big fuss made about the crucifixion doesn't make sense to you, too? But you still call yourself a christian. What is the significance of Jesus aside from crucifixion and resurrection, which both seem like a rather party-ish trick for god to pull off.
Thanks for your frank and even passionate defense of atheism.
My pleasure.
I see it as an inevitable outcome of a fallen world. Some babies are born anchephalic, it is not fair.
See, what do genetic disorders have to do with people being able to do bad things? If there is no original sin that makes humans and the whole world bad from the inside out, how can babies be born in suffering?
Or that we should be rescued from pain by some omnipotent power?
It's about responsibility. If you were wearing a fire proof suit and had a huge container of flame retardant on your back and you were happening to see that your neighbour's house is burning and their child is on the second floor, screaming for help at the window - wouldn't it be your responsibility to go and rescue that child? How come god constantly ignores his responsibility in relation to human suffering?
