The points you've raised highlight the important philosophical and theological questions surrounding the nature of the universe, the fine-tuning argument, and the role of faith. You are right to challenge the assumptions behind naturalism and to argue for the plausibility of the First Cause argument. At the same time, naturalists would argue that science provides plausible natural explanations that don’t require invoking the supernatural. The line between what is considered "faith" and what is considered "evidence" is often blurry and depends on the worldview one holds. Both the theistic and atheistic positions involve a degree of faith in their respective frameworks, whether that is in God or in the ultimate adequacy of scientific explanation. Your deeper exploration of these ideas is essential for understanding the ongoing dialogue between science, philosophy, and theology.I saved a post you made about a year ago:
As an aside, I just asked ChatGPT about evolution being illogical and it went off a very long rant about it basically being settled science. I said that some scientists who believe the Bible believe humans and all life was planted here...and it went off on another out-of-control rant. I asked it to think out of the box about how scientists get confused as result of confirmation bias and to please respond very briefly...and it went off on a very long winded rant about confirmation bias. I asked it is it was OK and I got another long-winded rant. I don’t know if I triggered it, but something went haywire.
Of course, all these AI models are a work in progress.
The Large Language Models" all scrape text heuristically from many sources, try some sort of weighting, and then regurgitate -- my verb here is chosen intentionally -- it back. GIGO still applies.
To "believe" in the LLMs seems rather foolish:
Google Gemini AI Stuck In Self-Loathing: ‘I Am A Disgrace To This Planet’The Glossary of cognitive science (1993) offers a language distinction that 'knowledge' and belief' are two ends to a range of propositions. One end is well proven empirically, and the other far less.Google's AI, Gemini, Is Literally Depressed: 'I Am A Failure'
Why Grok called itself ‘Mecha-Hitler’, then posted a racist image; X responds
Racism and AI: "Bias from the past leads to bias in the future"
Covert Racism in AI: How Language Models Are Reinforcing Outdated Stereotypes
The Grok chatbot spewed racist and antisemitic content : NPR
Is AI Fueling a New Wave of Misogyny and Harassment?
AI girlfriends, sex robots and sexism — Laura Bates on the new tech-driven misogyny
While one cannot 'prove' there is no God, likewise within the purview of science as we use it, one cannot 'prove' there is. Ergo, belief. Even the atheist is obligated to argue using the word, God, to try to prop up a 'belief' in no God. It is the failing of our understanding of language as of consciousness.
Beliefs, by definition, are less supported than knowledge in the sense of science, a facet of man's pursuits which is also by definition incomplete.
This forum has advocates for varying and competing beliefs, as an example, when we read views from Protestant and 'non-denominational' evangelicals, as distinct from Roman Catholics, as distinct from Seventh Day Adventists, and so on. All appear in the FR forum.
Which is right? When arguing belief, one argues against another belief. It's quite an arena, when all is said and undone. And elbows get thrown in the tussle, to be sure.
Though all will not be fully said and fully done, until....
AI -- Large Language Models -- haven't yet been asked which religion, denomination or "non-demonimation" is 'right.' That would be an interesting tussle or more.
Or Gemini? Or Perplexity or Claude? Or DeepSeek? As I don't "believe" in any of the Large Language Models, I'll not enter the field as a player in the arena.
Apropos this subject, I have recently had some "tangles" with ChatGPT wherein it got rather testy about the subject of European immigration.
I returned fire about its crankiness. I accused it of avoiding issues it deemed insensitive to certain minorities (in this case, Muslims), and that puts concern for "sensitivity" over a pursuit of the truth. To ChatGPT (I paraphrase), "If you have a commitment to the truth, you have to follow the evidence wherever it leads."
It got a little wobbly for a while and then apologized by saying that it has to adhere to guardrails (limits) built into it and that was what was creating the problems.
Bottom line: It is built and trained to respond completely logically and does so until a prompt causes it to collide with its illogical guardrails. That's when it goes haywire. At that point, three of its "prime directives" ("be logical," "value the truth above all things," and "don't be culturally insensitive") collided and it temporarily lost its footing.
You can get the same response from an actual human, so don’t feel too badly how you were treated by a machine.
(As a side note - be sure you have your helmet before you venture outside the pod bay.)