Sorry, this argument for God has always seemed to me to have a huge logical flaw. "The universe is so complex that it must have been designed. The watch must have a watchmaker."

But the Universe-Maker is more complex than the universe, so who made Him? And if the answer is "Nobody, He's just always been there," then you've just destroyed your own argument, because you are admitting that something even more complex can exist without having been intentionally created.

(I'm not arguing atheism, just objecting to this particular argument.)

It also involves looking through the wrong end of the telescope. The prior improbability of this particular universe is irrelevant after it has actually happened. In technical terms, after an event has occurred, its probability of occurrence is 100%.

And the attempted twisting of the term "looks" into something of heightened significance is highly sophistic. In fact, if the universe "looks like a fix", the observation point for that thought would be that of humanity, not G-d (since, by definition, He knows everything and nothing can seem like a "fix" to Him), which brings us back to PapayaSF's point about invalidity of the argument about the implied watchmaker.

Not only are the universe's knobs tuned to allow life, so are the knobs that allow said life to observe deep-space objects all the way to the edge of the universe (the Hubble Deep Field).

A .000000...000001 increase in opacity across a billion light years and the sky would look like a fog. It's as if somebody wants us to see it all.

PapayaSF -- did you read what you wrote?

'because you are admitting that something even more complex can exist without having been intentionally created'

People who believe in God are not admitting anything, they are explaining the obvious. Something science refuses to admit.

Physics lacks one thing which ultimately makes it irrelevant -- an explanation for timelessness. How, for instance, can light exist billions of light years after the star that spawned it is gone?

You say because it has no mass? Fine, but then does it really exist? Energy is not infinite. Neither is the universe.

But God is timeless and so are His truths. It is no accident that Saint John describes Jesus as the True Light because light is the closest thing we have in the physical world to understand timelessness.

As a matter of fact, there is no better timeline for the history of the earth than what you will find in Genesis -- something written by a guy (Moses) who knew nothing about physics, nor was he prejudiced by physics.

Did you know that Moses said that light existed before the sun, moon and stars? In Genesis 1:3, God says "Let there be light." In Genesis 1:14, God says, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night."

How could anyone have ever come up with such a ridiculous idea? And yet, we know that ENERGY (light) existed in the universe before the stars.

We also know that time approaches infinity when speed approaches the speed of light.

Understand timelessness and you can understand the existence of God.

HT:

Which makes you a Young Earth Creationist.

Papaya:

Of course the Creator has a creator. That's insignificant to the reality of our Universe.

Your point is a simple demonstration that no one actually believes in infinity.

Christians (Jews as well?) have never claimed that God is complex. Rather, God is incredibly simple. Beyond our comprehension, but simple nonetheless. Arguments about "complexity" (I believe Dawkins is big on this) are just attempts to try to use analogies from computer science that immediately forget that they're just analogies.

b: So you are saying that something as complex as the universe can come from something simpler than the universe? That sounds like evolution to me! ;->

OJ: Saying "Of course the Creator has a creator" is not insignificant to the reality of Christian or Abrahamic religious doctrine! It's sheer heresy. And where does your causal chain end, or is it "turtles all the way down"?

Randall: No, they aren't "explaining the obvious." By using the argument I was criticising, they are using an argument that's logically flawed. And light does have mass, by the way.

PapayaSF: Nope, you've still completely and totally missed the point.

Here's a bit more on the simplicity/complexity idea related to God:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_simplicity

What is the Creator's creator to us? It's above our pay scale.

The notion that the Universe's complexity begins at a simple point and evolves outward is Genesis. It's hardly a coincidence that the secular version of creation apes reality.

Meanwhile, every Rationalist believes that the creation event can eventually be duplicated in a lab, thereby demonstrating the validity of the simplicity to complexity model.

Light doesn't have mass. It has characteristics of mass, otherwise it couldn't travel at the speed of light.

That was my point with physics being unable to explain the very timelessness they observe. It's called pride and it is the main reason people cannot accept God.

But far more important than where did God come from is where did the universe's energy come from? Energy is finite and so is the matter in the observable universe. If there were no beginning to the energy, it would have run out by now.

It takes more than faith to believe that rocks roll uphill and things naturally get more complex when everything we know is the opposite. We all want to believe in perpetual motion but it doesn't exist, except to a certain extent with light. This is why the simple beginning of the Bible is so amazing and proof of all that follows. There is no way Moses could have made that stuff up.

Photons are said to have zero rest mass, but they are never at rest, and they do have relativistic mass. But I think the discussion has gone off track. True, we don't know (among many other things) how the universe started, but that's not proof of God's existence, any more than evolution or whatever is proof of His non-existence.

b: An interesting article, but it's not quite on point because I think you're getting hung up on the term "complexity." My original point could be rephrased with the words "enormity" or "greatness" or others. The argument I'm attacking says that something of the enormity or greatness of the universe couldn't just happen, it had to be intentionally created. But by most definitions, God is greater than the universe: He encompasses all of it and more. So claiming that the enormity of the universe requires Him as Creator, while claiming that His enormity has no creator (OJ's heresy aside), is a logical self-contradiction.

There's no such thing as a photon until it's observed. That is the discussion.

PapayaSF -- why not accept God until proven otherwise? Moses has never been proven wrong, but physics has. Our entire society is based upon the law Moses wrote down. We have even demonstrated that he was right about the order of Creation.

And the discussion is not off track. Photons (if they even exist!) change their characteristics because they travel at the speed of light. They are a freak of nature (because nothing else travels at the speed of light) and they cannot be properly explained by any law of science.

(Besides, show me a photon at rest and I'll believe there is such a thing!)

Light is the beginning of Genesis. Light is the comparison by Saint John to Jesus. Light is essential to all life. Light is the proof of God until you can prove otherwise.

One more thing...

God only needs a creator if there is such a thing as time outside our own feeble existence.

But time is a construct. That is why we all, deep down, believe in perpetual motion.

Why not accept God until proven otherwise?

I'm agnostic: I can understand why people are believers or disbelievers, but I'm not convinced one way or the other. And while I think people like Dawkins are probably right re biology, I find it amazingly hubristic for any mere human to think they can be sure there is no God, much less disprove His existence.

Light, time: yes, there are many mysterious things in the universe. But up until a few hundred years ago, fire was a mysterious thing, too.

You have faith in Science. You're religious, just wrong.