SonOh1: Summary: There could be a god as much as there could not be a god but it is outside of our control and observation. The universe is how it is and our visions must fall into the scheme of the universe in order for them to be plausible. (even then our visions may not be correct)

Gerry: I agree the limited data we have is ambiguous to a great degree. This leaves us apparently free to choose, not just in words but in actions, and thus reveal who we are (or wish to be).

Travis Paskiewicz: ...much of what we know about the universe was not "dreamed up" or "made to happen".

Gerry: My little syllogism (following the rather lengthy discussion above) is now shorter and hopefully easier to understand:

Major Premise: Some things that appear to be designed, actually are.
Minor Premise: Some things in nature appear to be designed.
Conclusion: It is not unreasonable to believe that some things in nature may be designed.

It seems we simply don't know, for sure, that (as you say), "much of what we know about the universe was not "dreamed up" or "made to happen". Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't.

Travis Paskiewicz: It was simply discovering the nature of the processes causing things to happen.

Gerry: I don't deny that there are such things as secondary causes. For example (as discussed above), I write a program that produces drawings of landscapes with some degree of autonomy. The program is a directly created thing; the drawings are indirectly created. But they still are ultimately the result of design.

Travis Paskiewicz: That is not proof one way or the other for an intelligent creator, as the processes we observe don't display intelligence in any capacity we understand it.

Gerry: You're forgetting about the processes we all use to create things, like these posts; those processes definitely show intelligence, planning, purpose, design, etc. I find it hard to believe that such processes could spontaneously arise from non-intelligent, undirected processes and thus assume that there must be something intelligent behind it all. Seems like a very reasonable assumption to me.

Travis Paskiewicz: This only leaves a slim few options. One, there is no intelligence behind the universe, and it is simply static processes, the result of chaotic forces creating structure.

Gerry: Yeah, we can throw that one out -- at least until somebody can demonstrate that "chaotic forces" are capable of "creating structure" all on their own.

Travis Paskiewicz: Option 2, the universal intelligence far exceeds our own comprehension,

Gerry: That seems pretty obvious, I think; otherwise we wouldn't have to investigate this "universal intelligence" through a study of His works; we'd simply know it all already.

Travis Paskiewicz: ...but the natural processes are heading for a defined goal or state (That we don't know).

Gerry: You're right: we don't know.

Travis Paskiewicz: So which point are you trying to argue exactly?

Gerry: I'm arguing that (1) It's not unreasonable to POSTULATE an Intelligent Designer ("postulate" meand "to assume an unproven premise is true for the sake of further reasoning"); and (2) once we do that, we find the rest of our reasoning is on simple, familiar, and very practical ground.

Travis Paskiewicz: Because we all know this is another "intelligent creator" arguement,

Gerry: Yes it is.

Travis Paskiewicz: ...and being the courteous person that I am, I'm offering you the chance to slingshot this arguement passed your badly phrased question about how only everything in existence is "dreamed up and made to happen".

Gerry: Thanks for the courtesy.

Travis Paskiewicz: So what exactley is your proof that there is an intelligent creator?

Gerry: As I've said several times above, I offer no proof. Nor do I need any. My Creator is an axiom, a postulate, an "unproven premise that is accepted as true for the sake of further reasoning." The quality and value of this major premise is thus determined, not by proofs, but by the fruits of the subsequent reasoning. Which are many.

Travis Paskiewicz: Or were you hinging your argument on the fact that that nothing existential could have caused the big bang, because nothing existed prior to existence?

Gerry: I do think it's impossible to get something from nothing, which also means you can't get more out of something than is in the something to begin with. But that's not what my argument hinges on.

Bekah Wells: I think it might be possible for there to be a deity, for example- what controls nature? Does it even have control? Could there be something out there controlling it? Maybe. Unlikely, but anything is possible. I just don't believe that deity can be anything as described in religious texts.

Gerry: I find it helpful to think of books and authors. The characters in a book live in an entirely different world than the author of the book. And if it's a sci-fi or fantasy book, the laws of physics in the two worlds may even be different. Their time-lines certainly are: a day with the author may be just a few minutes -- or several years -- for the characters in the book, depending on how fast the author is writing. And of course the characters could only get to know the author if he or she decided to reveal him- or herself to them.

Nyarlathotep: There are a couple well known loop holes in the conversation of energy one of them is time-energy uncertainty: It is possible for the conversion of energy to be seemingly (there is a catch) violated for very short periods of time. This leads to all sorts of phenomena: the Casimir effect, the Lamb shift, Hawking radiation, particle self energy, the Higgs mechanism, dark energy, and many many more.

Gerry: "Seemingly violated" isn't the same as "violated." And things like "dark energy" are purely hypothetical. It seems to me you're denying ubiquitous and obvious realities that you experience, first hand, on a daily basis (like design and purpose) for obscure and unsubstantiated and unsubstantial possibilities.

Jeff Vella Leone: I don't think there is enough data for anybody to claim anything about creation, including:
"Gerry: So if we have personality, our Creator must also have a personality"
"Gerry: I'm saying that you can't get more out of something than is there to begin with."
So your assumption is not only arrogant and not based on evidence but is also unlikely.

Gerry: My assumption is reasonable because we see (and do) the kind of creation I'm describing every day. I'm just extending the known into the unknown.

Jeff Vella Leone: We know that we can create something which does not have personality, why can't it be the other way round?

Gerry: The TANSTAFAAL rule. Things with personality can pass on personality (or not); things without personality have no personality to pass on.

Jeff Vella Leone: You are jumping to a conclusion here, so you are being narrow minded about something.
I wish you realize this. here you stopped analyzing possibilities and closed all other options.

Gerry: Not true. I've chosen a particular philosophy based on experience, study, logic, etc; but I'm open to other possibilities. What I'm not willing to do is abandon something that has served me well for decades for something that, on it face, is less simple, familiar, and practical.

Jeff Vella Leone: Our designer might not be the original designer, but just a product of yet another designer or a natural phenomena we haven't encountered yet. (Still assuming design)

Gerry: But eventually you get to the First Designer and that's who we call God. I think I already said that.

Jeff Vella Leone: Your "TANSTAAFL rule" is a close minded assumption.

Gerry: But one that appears to hold throughout the universe. One can talk like an agnostic, but nobody can live like one. We are forced by the nature of things to make choices, and those choices reveal our true beliefs.

Jeff Vella Leone: I can make an other close minded assumption and say that "man cannot possibly fly" or "transparent blood does not exist".

Gerry: Yes you can. And a thousand years ago you could have lived by those assumptions without fear of contradiction. Today, you couldn't. What are you looking for me to say? That all things are possible? Christians have been saying that for centuries. But if I have to choose between a philosophy that says TANSTAAFL because we've never seen such a thing, and a philosophy that outright rejects the possibility of a Creator because some people think if they look hard enough they might find an exception to the TANSTAAFL rule, well, I choose the former.

Jeff Vella Leone: See the problem with close minded assumptions?

Gerry: Again, what would you have me say? Nobody knows anything for sure. We place our bets and take our chances. How's that?

Jeff Vella Leone: "The TANSTAFAAL rule" gives no space for a formation of a person with a personality from someone or something that doesn't have a personality. It is a narrow minded assumption that excludes the other possibilities.
Do not lie please,

Gerry: Yes, that's true. But I don't see any reason to abandon that principle since it has served me so well for decades and since it appears to be a universal law. BUT -- if someone could show me a practical example of where it doesn't hold true, then I would have to change my view. So while "narrow" in your evaluation, my view does not exclude other possibilities; it just requires evidence of a non-TANSTAAFL process to make it worth considering.

Jeff Vella Leone: Such as? I don't remember me creating an other personality for the past 27 years.(all my life)

Gerry: I've created a number of personalities. Characters in books I have written, characters in computer games I've coded, artificial intelligences that can draw and speak; small robots with distinct personalities, etc.

Jeff Vella Leone: Not only that but you cannot generalize things like that without evidence. Your evidence (which you haven't presented) is not related to your claim. What we do today has no bearing on the original creation, we are a spec of dust compared to the origin of life, we are just 200 000 years old.

Gerry: I would say about 6000 years old, as a race, which is about as far back as historical records go. But be that as it may, if we were indeed created in the image of our Creator, then projecting ourselves backward by analogy is a valid kind of generalization. Again, I'm saying anything of this is infallible; just simple, familiar, and practical.

Jeff Vella Leone: It seems I have no choice, I will demolish this stupid assumption here an now:

An AI was invented that has no personality but has existence.(like AI of today)
100 000 years pass, it lost it's history memory and it(+ the genetics lab) is the only survivor of a catastrophe.
The fist question it says is what is my purpose?
The only piece of data left in the drive reads:
Operation Phenix: Prove "The TANSTAAFL rule" WRONG".
Create random structures in DNA of living tissue until results in something different then the AI.
After 500 years of trial and error a successful sample was created that displays some kind of emotions.
Several variations were created, until the most efficient form was the result.
Conclusion
An AI without personality created someone with emotions and personality, without the help of someone who has a personality.
This is just one of the billion of other possibilities your close minded assumption does not cater for.

Gerry: Nice sci-fi story. Too bad we won't live 100,500 years to see if such a thing could actually happen. Again, you're abandoning the known for the imaginary.

Jeff Vella Leone: Happy now, your assumption is proven wrong,

Gerry: I don't see where you proved my assumption wrong; you just outlined a fictional sci-fi story.

Jeff Vella Leone: I did not want to do this but you cannot even admit that this IS a narrow minded assumption that has no evidence.

Gerry: The evidence for the TANSTAAFL rule is that there is no actual example that refutes it. So yes, it's tentative -- like all physical laws. But it's a good one, right up there with the laws of thermodynamics, etc.

Jeff Vella Leone: Follow where the evidence leads, not conclusions based on narrow minded assumptions,

Gerry: That's exactly what I've done. I have first-hand evidence that the creation-by-design paradigm is simple, familiar, and exceptionally practical. I have examples all around me of machines that are less than 100% efficient, but none that are more than 100% efficient (which leads me to the TANSTAAFL rule). Etc.

Jeff Vella Leone: You don't need to bet or take chances.

Gerry: Of course we do. We all act in faith, based on our beliefs, all day, every day. Will that chair support me, or should I test it before I sit down? Is this the right girl to marry? Should I stay in this job, or seek another? Etc. All things we have to make educated guesses about.

Jeff Vella Leone: It is ok to say we don't know yet.

Gerry: And I do say that about a great many things. Life on other planets? Don't know. Exceptions to the TANSTAAFL rule? Don't think so, but don't really know. Etc.

Jeff Vella Leone: Trust me, your life will not be effected if you say that you don't know, it will instead get better.

Gerry: I really don't know what you're trying to get at, Jeff.

Jeff Vella Leone: If a pope decides to ban condoms, you are not forced to obey either.

Gerry: Why would I care what the pope says about condoms? I'm 61 years old and my wife is 66. We don't need 'em.

Jeff Vella Leone: You will find true freedom, the freedom of the mind.

Gerry: But I'm not feeling unduly constrained as it is.

Zaphod: OK do birds count as a force of nature because we have many types of bird nest some made with stick and stone and mud...

Gerry: The origin of birds is disputed: some say they spontaneously emerged over a long period of time, others that they were designed to behave as they do. So the example of bird's building nests (or bees building hives, etc) doesn't help.

Zaphod: ...wind, water and sand erosion they have and continue to form many many structures and patterns all over the world and these forces do so on other planets as well.

Gerry: This is a similar case, and we can go even deeper: hydrogen and oxygen combine to form water which has properties unlike both hydrogen and oxygen. Some argue that this is an example of "emergence" -- new properties arising, unbidden, from things without those properties; while others say, "What's the big deal? Hydrogen and oxygen were designed to combine in that way, and water was the expected (and planned) outcome." So again, no help.

To answer the question before us, we have to focus on things whose origin is known, undisputed, and well-understood. Things like cars and computers and catapults. These are the known, undisputed, and well-understood cases that can shed light on the unknow, disputed, and less-well-understood cases.

Zaphod: How about considering our solar system as an example, its held together and shaped and formed by gravity matter and one incredible reactor one of just 200 billion of such star systems that exist in our galaxy alone with estimates that there are least another 100 billion galaxies in our observable universe.

Gerry: See above.

Zaphod: Nature has a weird way of creating things when conditions are right and then these things evolve and change like viruses and bacteria into different things better able to survive, like we do when we overcome obstacles I myself say we are an example of chaotic forces creating or perhaps leading to structure.

Gerry: Things do not evolve in the sense you're suggesting, as far as we know. They change, yes; but the changes (as far as we know) never introduce new information into the system. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria, for example, are simpler (not more complex) things than the bacteria from which they spawned; the activation of the capability necessary to resist the antibiotics -- already latent in the bacteria -- actually makes them more specific and less likely to survive in the long run.

Zaphod: But man when you think of all the stars out there one one would be betting against some serious odds to wager we are the only intelligent life in the universe...

Gerry: Or even that this is the only universe that exists. Agreed.

Zaphod: ...and I don't know about you but I wonder how advanced things have gotten out there, I mean I wonder if there are lifeforms on other planets who believe in what we would consider different gods than we do. they stand as like a chance to be right about their gods as any one of the thousands of religions here on earth do.

Gerry: Sure.

Zaphod: But it would not be reasonable to assume any of the versions of a god exist based on odds alone, to do so would be to say it is unlikely all the other forms of god exist when we they stand just as good a chance no matter how crazy and wild the idea of their god may be their versions of god or a creator are just as unprofitable and disprovable as anyone else's.

Gerry: Well, I think "crazy and wild ideas" are less likely to be true than "prudent and well-reasoned ideas".

Zaphod: ask instead this is it more reasonable to assume there is not a particular intelligent designer responsible for all this or is it more reasonable to assume its all nature.

Gerry: That's exactly the question i do ask. And in the light of the actual (not imagined) evidence at hand -- especially the design-and-create paradigm that we all use to make complex, functioning things -- I suspect that there is a Creator of it all.

Zaphod: Nature does not deny anything, it just is,

Gerry: Until somebody says, "Nature is all there is." That's when the denying starts. It's like characters in a computer game insisting that their world is all that exists and there can't possible be any other (with programmers and pizza and coke in it).

Zaphod: but believing in some rendition of a creator denies a lot.

Gerry: Truth is always restrictive. If two plus two is four, it's not all those other numbers.

Zaphod: The difference between something that is and something believed but can not be proven is pretty much the definition of unreasonable.

Gerry: But that's not what's happening here. I'm saying that nature along isn't up to the job required of it; I'm also saying that we all observe and even participate in meta-natural processes every time we use our creative abilities to change the natural course of events. So clearly there's more here than just time, space, matter, and physical laws. There's US. And we (1) can't be explained by natural forces alone, and (2) appear to be above and beyond those forces, at least in part, because we can manipulate and control those forces, at least in part, simply by WILLING things to be different.

Zaphod: unreasonable means that it can not be reasoned or to put it another way underpinned by logic and good sense

Gerry: Yes. Which is why it is unreasonable to think that something as complex and functional as a person arose, unbidden, by random mutations and an unrelated and unguided selection filter. THAT's a stretch.

Zaphod: So to conclude this yes it can be reasoned so it is reasonable to conclude there MAY BE SOME SORT OF CREATING FORCE

Gerry: Not MAY BE, at this point in your sentence, but IS. WE are a creative force.

Zaphod: but not necessarily a particularly intelligent one or some grand designer.

Gerry: Yes. That's an hypothesis; an educated guess. A postulate (as I've said), accepted as true without proof so we can see where it logically leads us.

Zaphod: We have evidence all around us of things being created by nature

Gerry: I would say, "We have evidence all around us of nature doing what it was designed to do."

Zaphod: and you would have to be pretty closed minded not to acknowledge that,

Gerry: It's not closed minded to require a SUFFICIENT cause for an effect.

Zaphod: furthermore it is unlikely with all the other ideas that have been thought up for a creator that with all the versions that have came into existence and disappeared over the existence of humanity that any unproven creator we still believe in today is more likely than any unproven creators or gods we have had in human history as there are so many to choose from.

Gerry: That sounds like you're saying that because there are a lot of wrong answers that have been proposed to a particular question, there must not be a right answer. Or that the question itself is invalid. I disagree on both fronts.

Zaphod: It's also extremely unreasonable to assume these gods over chaotic creation which we see examples of all around us.

Gerry: But we don't see "chaotic creation" all around us. We see a tightly integrated system behaving as it was designed to behave. See how we can both ASSERT our position without proof? That means that how and why the system around us is what it is disputed; unknown. So we can't make appeals to it to bolster our parallel arguments; we have to appeal to that which is known and undisputed.

Zaphod: Only once it has been proven for a creator to exist, only then it will be reasonable to consider it

Gerry: Evidence for a Creator outside of the universe will, by definition, always be indirect. But there is plenty of such indirect evidence. The Creator's works, for example, around us, and the witness of reason and conscience within us.

Zaphod: ...other things that have been reasoned to be proven.

Gerry: Keep in mind, Zaphod, that those other things have NOT been proven. Or "reasoned to be proven".