You are objectively wrong. It requires no faith. There is simply no evidence for an intelligent being at the root of creation, no data that cannot be explained with much simpler mechanisms than intelligence. The proton is complicated by human standards, but it still is nowhere near as complicated as intelligence. You can't have a conversation with a proton.

Technically it requires faith to assert that the universe did not have its origin from some intelligent supernatural being, just as it does to assert the opposite. The only thing we can truly say based on the data is "we don't know for certain at this time".

No, it doesn't (at least not if you are adhering to the scientific method). This is a very common bit of religious propaganda, and it is 100% wrong. Intelligence has some very specific and readily identifiable characteristics. In particular, it has high Kolmogorov complexity [1]. This is what distinguishes intelligence from other forms of complexity, like chaos or the decimal expansions of irrational numbers. And there is no evidence of high Kolmogorov complexity in the creation of the universe. To the contrary, all of the evidence points to extraordinarily low Kolmogorov complexity at the foundations of our reality, things that can be described in just a few pages -- maybe even just a few lines -- of math. So to posit an intelligence as the explanation is every bit as unjustified as positing that the Tooth fairy is responsible for the coin under your pillow.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity

> at least not if you are adhering to the scientific method

All the information you have comes from your five senses. Isn't some kind of faith necessary to believe that the scientific method would lead to an accurate understanding of reality?

That depends on what you mean by "an accurate understanding of reality." One can observe empirically that the scientific method converges towards something which enables you to predict the outcomes of experiments more and more accurately is it converges. Whether you want to call that "an accurate understanding of reality" is a terminological quibble, but it seems like an apt label to me.

Note that I'm not arguing against the scientific method, but I'm arguing against your claim that it alone can deliver an accurate understanding of reality outside of what we can experiment and observe. This is your parent response:

" You are objectively wrong. It requires no faith. There is simply no evidence for an intelligent being at the root of creation, no data that cannot be explained with much simpler mechanisms than intelligence. The proton is complicated by human standards, but it still is nowhere near as complicated as intelligence"

You can look at the CMB and take that as evidence of the big bang, but you are relying on faith when you make either of these predictions:

- The singularity that resulted in the big bang was created from nothing, time didn't exist before.

- The big bang was created by God

Those aren't predictions. Predictions are about things that are still in the future. The BB was in the past.

But that is neither here nor there. "The big bang was created by God" has exactly the same epistemological status as "The big bang was created by Vishnu" or "The big bang was created by Cthulhu" or "The big bang was created by the tooth fairy". The evidence for each of those is exactly the same, i.e. there is none.

I meant statement, not prediction (sorry for the using the wrong term).

> But that is neither here nor there. "The big bang was created by God" has exactly the same epistemological status as "The big bang was created by Vishnu" or "The big bang was created by Cthulhu" or "The big bang was created by the tooth fairy". The evidence for each of those is exactly the same, i.e. there is none.

Yes, all of these require faith. Same as being certain that the initial singularity came from nothing (or from "simpler mechanisms than intelligence" which don't also have a clear origin).

No, it is not the same, because there is evidence that the origin, whatever it might be, is simple.

If we live in a simulation, there is a simulation creator.

Serious physicists agree that the simulation hypothesis is a possibility, so you are the unscientific one saying that believing there might be a creator is believing in the Tooth fairy.

Of course the simulation hypothesis is a possibility. So is the tooth fairy. And both of those hypotheses have the same amount of supporting data. (Actually, the tooth fairy has more because people really do get money when they leave teeth under their pillows.)

And here you're equivocating on the word faith.

In your post, "faith" either means "accepting best current evidence and logic" or "believing that there's a supernatural explanation without any evidence whatsoever" and it can't rightly mean both, because those definitions are incompatible.

No. Recall the statement I was responding to:

> it requires faith to assert that the universe did not have its origin from some intelligent supernatural being

That is false. It does not require faith to assert this, any more than it requires faith to assert that the tooth fairy does not exist, simply because neither the tooth fairy nor ID have any supporting evidence. Actually, the tooth fairy does have some supporting evidence, namely, that people do sometimes get money when they leave teeth under their pillow. There is no evidence for any process with high Kolmogorov complexity at the root of creation. None. Zero. In the absence of any such evidence, it requires no faith to assert that whatever is at the root of creation is not intelligent.

I agree with you, which means I think we're talking at cross purposes and/or your replied to the wrong person.

Well, I was responding to "you're equivocating on the word faith" [1]. I don't believe I was.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39377297

where did all these building blocks come from then? you still know nothing

That's not true. I know that the fundamental processes that occur in our universe can be described by simple mathematical laws, so there is no need to posit anything as complex as an intelligence to explain them. Yes, it's possible that there is an intelligence there, just as it is possible that the tooth fairy exists. But mere possibility is not enough to make a good scientific hypothesis.

Your tone suggests you think this statement is provocative because religion attempts to justify itself with its insidious attempts to appropriate language.

You appear to think “intelligent being” and “faith” are inextricable, but the word faith exists perfectly fine without a need to believe in an “intelligent being”.

What if the rules of the universe are themselves a form of God-like intelligence?

They're omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. Their true form exists somehow outside of reality and cannot be (currently) comprehended by us mortals. Their touch can be found wherever we look, but their intent and motivation remain mysterious.

I believe this idea is called Pantheism.

But what is the intelligent being made of? Did they come from randomness or from yet another higher-level intelligent being? You're just scratching the surface of this rabbit-hole!

It's Djinns all the way down, that's why you've got to turn to GOD (GOD over Djinns)...