Well, yes. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

The most extraordinary claim is that we are here by 'chance' or a happy 'accident' rather than a supreme being putting us here.

Now you're just shifting the argument.

Sure maybe. But there's a long way from "life was intentionally created on Earth" to "an interventionist God created the entire universe". Perhaps aliens seeded life on Earth. So even if the appearence of life on Earth couldn't be otherwise explained, I don't think it would be particularly compelling evidence for the kind of religion that people tend to believe.

Not if there's evidence of one, no. Why, do you have some?

I'm going to guess they don't have any.

The existence of the universe itself

How does the existence of the universe prove that there is some timeless, extra-universal intelligence with the power to create universes? If there were a creator, it would add more questions than it would answer.

So the existence of something is proof that it was created purposefully?

If the existence happens to be a perfect construct. Nihilism is not a pass to spew pseudo science.

Define "perfect construct" if you could please; take your time, I'll wait.

We're in agreement about nihilism, but neither is willful blindness.

Look around you... the fact that earth is habitable...the gases of the atmosphere are ideal for humans...the rotation of the planet allow for day and night...the distance from the sun(a little bit closer or further away and we would have been in trouble)...the human body in all its intricacies.

Did your god intentionally design the system so that the sun sometimes gives people skin cancer? And is it intended that this cancer causes them to die slow and painful deaths?

And we have finally come to the first line of defence for atheists...why do bad things happen. I could go on for hours but I would suggest to maybe take this off YN if you are really interested in my answer?

Did you not say the system was "a perfect construct"? The side effect where it kills people prematurely doesn't seem very perfect. Anyways, nice programmed deflection you have there.

LOL

The only thing that proves is that the universe exists. Claiming that someone created it is only moving the question, because who then made the creator?

This is a very famous point raised by theologians many centuries ago. Circular reasoning can hardly count as valid. What if the creator always existed? And besides no major religion deals with this point so I wouldn't have an answer.

What if the universe has always existed, and every few billion years or so, a portion of it explodes outwards into a completely new direction of space?

Apologists have used the same argument for the last several hundred years and have done nothing to push the discussion forward.

Believing is not hard no, anyone can believe whatever they want.

What is hard is proving that what you believe is true.

Or for the other side to prove that you are wrong. Let's be honest here, none of us can "proof" the existence or non existence of a creator but we have been endowed with intelligence and humility to hopefully come to the right conclusion.

> Let's be honest here, none of us can "proof" the existence or non existence of a creator.

Indeed, let's be honest, we cannot prove anything.

> but we have been endowed with intelligence and humility to hopefully come to the right conclusion.

So then, the right conclusion would simply be that we don't know, right? You are free to have some preference, i.e, you prefer that a creators exists, and that's fine, but as you said earlier, let's be honest we cannot prove it.

So with the humility that was endowed to us, let's just acknowledge what we don't know. And that's why people are trying to understand :)

So game over, you win because humility?

It’s not hard to “believe”, but it’s impossible to prove.

Theological debates usually end up with the creationist position being that belief without proof equals faith, there for proof is not desired.

Science is skepticism, religion is unquestionable; the two are opposites.

Religion isn't unquestionable, doubt is a key to faith. There's an entire academic discipline devoted to critically studying the divine, theology.

That is not an excuse for avoiding and denying any insight into creation or trying to fill the gap with gods of course. I strongly disagree with the thread starter's sentiment

Does it critically study the basis for itself, or does it start with that 'immaculate' presumption.

I didn’t mean to suggest that one is not allowed to question religion (these days), I meant questioning religion becomes either a useless spiral of circular logic or you finally wind up at the point I made about faith. That’s been my experience at least.

All that said, reading Jordan Peterson’s book has increased my opinion of the Bible and the knowledge about the human condition that it contains, but as an allegory, not a literal history.

Who/what created the creator then?

And please don't say "the creator has always been there", because the same could be said about a universe to make a creator redundant...

Since that argument cuts exactly as well both ways, why bring it up at all? We're talking about information content here more than metaphysics.

Not quite. Since we know the markup of the chemicals of the universe we also know that it has a beginning and an end date or simply put that energy was required to set it off. That would explain that it can't be timeless whereas we simply do not have any attributes or what the creator is made of hence can't come to a conclusion regarding his mortality

Causality is a concept found in this universe/reality. All meta-reality concepts like causality, time, place, identity, information, and such originating from within are underjustified for considerations outside it.

Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là.

Why not both?