Posted: Jul 25, 2010 5:11 pm
I'm SO glad you said that. I'm an architect. I design things. When I see a good design, I recognize and appreciate the hand of the designer. I see a good design in the universe, which implies a designer.
Here we simply disagree. I don't see good design in the universe, seeing good design implies you know what it was designed for, among other things. I often see the claim that the universe was fine tuned for life, and I have to respond "how do they know it was for life?". I mean, it could be fine tuned... for planets, galaxies, sand and molten rock. There is a lot more of that. It could even be fine tuned to expand forever, regardless of it's material contents. Indeed, it is entirely possible that it is not finetuned at all.
When it comes to the gods of all the religions, I'm atheist, mainly because those gods are just too dumb. But when it comes to Spinoza's designer, I have to be agnostic. There is the possibility that the universe itself has the mechanism of design built into itself. A type of universal DNA, if you will.
Yes on a fundamental level regarding the ultimate origin of the universe, I agree that in the absense of evidence to the contrary, the honest approach is technically agnosticism. Regarding the specific religious claims, I'm an atheist. I see no reason to think there are any gods and I find all the arguments unconvincing. The same applies for the fine tuning argument, It's unimpressive to me.
The argument about whether or not there is a god/designer and whether or not the truth claims of a particular religion are valid are two completely different arguments.
Yes but I think Cali's question here is specifically regarding the assertion that specific molecular biological entities are designed. And the obvious question is : how do they falsifiably infer design? Give us a rigorous, scienficic metric for detecting design.