‘So you’ve considered that the “concept of divinity” is handed down but where does your idea of what is plausible or not come from?’
addressing the ‘concept of divinity’, I find it implausible because I do not accept the existence of the supernatural, or, alternately put, if it does exist, I reject that it has any effect on the natural world;that being the world we can see and experience with our senses...further, I note there hae been roughly 4500 differing deities recorded throughout history; American Protestants alone tally more than a dozen denominations, with widely differing theologies about how to properly worship the same godhead. This tells me that people are hardwired to seek supernatural explanations for what they cannot comprehend, and from that I draw the conclusion that man creates the god or gods that will fit a needed social construct, and then carries that forward for the progeny...
for me, plausability carries with a probing context, which seeks to reconcile sensate observations with explanations that accord with the senses; it makes no claim for certainty, nor do I...of course I cannot prove that no god or gods exist, just as I cannot prove the combination of natural forces that created existence; I rest my ‘plausability’ on the belief that no social conscience guides the earth in its daily jaunt around the sun, the searing harshness of the natural world convinces me of that...
“if it does exist, I reject that it has any effect on the natural world”
Ah. But that’s a position of faith. You don’t know it to be true, you just prefer to believe that to the alternative, which is to either admit the possibility or at least be agnostic about it and say “I don’t know”.
“This tells me that people are hardwired to seek supernatural explanations for what they cannot comprehend, and from that I draw the conclusion that man creates the god or gods that will fit a needed social construct”
Perhaps, but I could say “Scientists have constructed thousands of hypotheses, many which contradict each other. This leads me to believe that humans are hardwired to seek natural explanations, etc”. It’s not a very strong argument, I think, since you can apply it to nearly any human pursuit; thousands of ideas on how to form a government, or run a business, or raise a child, etc. The existence of differing opinions doesn’t mean that there isn’t an underlying truth or mean that one of those opinions might not actually be correct.
“just as I cannot prove the combination of natural forces that created existence”
Ah, but even this speculation is a scientific impossibility. “Natural” forces could not create existence, since they would be a part of that same existence. A thing cannot create itself.
“I rest my ‘plausability’ on the belief that no social conscience guides the earth in its daily jaunt around the sun, the searing harshness of the natural world convinces me of that...”
That’s just anthropomorphism. If there were a deity, there’s no reason to assume it would think or act like you would expect it to, so a real skeptic shouldn’t jump to such conclusions.
Something to chew on before I go to sleep:
Meaning that the atheist/antitheist position the claim that there is no Creator/God, is one lacking in evidential warrant and requires great faith. For it can only presume that an exceedingly vast, systematically ordered, intricate universe,* exquisitely finely tuned for earthly life with its extensive diversity and astounding complexity - from God’s “Big Bang” to DNA - came to be by known (or potentially known), purely natural demonstrable powers, as if it was Divine, without any supreme supernatural intelligence behind it.
And while man- using His God-given intelligence - has discovered the immediate cause and means of many things (like lighting) that were once attributed by some to be purely supernatural, such is simply a discovery of how God created natural things to work, and which laws He used, which is beside actions which require supernatural creation and organization of matter, and the programming of it.
Moreover, rather than a trajectory of scientific discovery leading to a purely natural explanation of the universe, instead, the more that is discovered then the more perplexing the competing hypotheses become.
For the Christian the evidence comports to the omniscient omnipotent God of the Bible as being the Ultimate First Cause, organizer and programmer. And who, by His very nature of knowing what every effect will be of every one of man’s choices - not only for this life but for eternity - has in that light a reason for His choices, including enabling man to make his choices and thus realize consequences.
And unlike man, as omnipotent can make all things to ultimately work out for Good, with justice as well as mercy and grace;
And which Being cannot be judged regarding His choices by finite and exceedingly ignorant man as specks in this darkened corner of the universe, existing on earth in but a moment of time. Despite the ignorant railings of antithiests who essential must presume omniscience in charging an all-knowing God of immorality, while themselves have no sure supreme standard for morality, much less knowing what every effect will be of every one of man’s choices and the ability to make it all work out for what is objectively Good in the light of all that can be know.
Many of which atheists even deny a creator as a hypothesis and regardless of whatever evidence could be offered, as well as for the historicity of the Biblical Christ.
It's almost impossible to understand how unfathomably massive our universe truly is
https://www.discovery.org/m/2020/06/Fine-Tuning-Parameters-Jay-Richards.pdf
'God: new evidence' - the fine tuning of the universe - part 1
When science and philosophy collide in a 'fine-tuned' universe
We Live in a Very Fortunate Universe
List of Fine-Tuning Parameters
List of Factors of Fine-Tuning of Intelligent Life in the Universe
Can DNA Prove the Existence of an Intelligent Designer?
[God DNA] Proves Presence of God” says Scientists
82 Mind-Blowing Facts about DNA | FactRetriever.com
'God: new evidence' - the fine tuning of the universe - part 1
Evidence for the Fine Tuning of the Universe
It Takes 26 Fundamental Constants To Give Us Our Universe, But They Still Don't Give Everything
The Universe as We Understand It May Be Impossible
Is There Any Evidence for Jesus Outside the Bible?
Ancient Evidence for Jesus from Non-Christian Sources
Is Jesus Alive?
Dawkins [essentially] Admits Nothing Can Persuade Him God Exists
*As Albert Einstein observed, " We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations."
Another non-Christian:
“The order of the universe is not an assumption; it’s an observed fact. We detect the light from distant quasars only because the laws of electromagnetism are the same 10 billion light years away as here. The spectra of those quasars are recognizable only because the same chemical elements are present there as here, and because the same laws of quantum mechanics apply. The motion of galaxies around one another follows familiar Newtonian gravity. Gravitational lenses and binary pulsar spin-downs reveal general relativity in the depths of space. We could have lived in a universe with different laws in every province, but we do not. This fact cannot but elicit feelings of reverence and awe.” ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
"according to many physicists, the fact that the universe is able to support life depends delicately on various of its fundamental characteristics, notably on the form of the laws of nature, on the values of some constants of nature, and on aspects of the universe’s conditions in its very early stages." https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fine-tuning/ A listing of such follows.
“I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing.” - Alan Sandage (winner of the Crawford prize in astronomy) Willford, J.N. March 12, 1991. Sizing up the Cosmos: An Astronomers Quest. New York Times, p. B9.
“Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word ‘miraculous’ without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word.” - George Ellis (British astrophysicist) Ellis, G.F.R. 1993. The Anthropic Principle: Laws and Environments. The Anthropic Principle, F. Bertola and U.Curi, ed. New York, Cambridge University Press, p. 30
“We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures.. .. If the Universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in.” - John O’Keefe (astronomer at NASA) Heeren, F. 1995. Show Me God. Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 200.
“As we look out into the universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together to our benefit, it almost seems as if the universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.” - Professor Freeman J. of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton
“The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident, is zero.” - Ilya Prigogine (Chemist-Physicist) Recipient of two Nobel Prizes in chemistry in, "Physics Today" 25, pp. 23-28
“The really amazing thing is not that life on Earth is balanced on a knife-edge, but that the entire universe is balanced on a knife-edge, and would be total chaos if any of the natural ‘constants’ were off even slightly. - - Dr. Paul Davies, esteemed author and Professor of Theoretical Physics at Adelaide University.
“...how surprising it is that the laws of nature and the initial conditions of the universe should allow for the existence of beings who could observe it. Life as we know it would be impossible if any one of several physical quantities had slightly different values.” - Professor Steven Weinberg (Nobel Laureate in High Energy Physics [a field of science that deals with the very early universe], writing in the journal “Scientific American”.)
16O has exactly the right nuclear energy level either to prevent all the carbon from turning into oxygen or to facilitate sufficient production of 16O for life. Fred Hoyle, who discovered these coincidences in 1953, concluded that “a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology.” - Hoyle, Fred. “The Universe: Past and Present Reflections,” in Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 20. (1982), p.16 (for more of these coincidences click here)
“If you equate the probability of the birth of a bacteria cell to chance assembly of its atoms, eternity will not suffice to produce one… Faced with the enormous sum of lucky draws behind the success of the evolutionary game, one may legitimately wonder to what extent this success is actually written into the fabric of the universe.” - Christian de Duve. “A Guided Tour of the Living Cell” (Nobel laureate and organic chemist)
“...The capacity of DNA to store information vastly exceeds that of any other known system: it is so efficient that all the information needed to specify an organism as complex as man weighs less than a few thousand millionths of a gram. The information necessary to specify the design of all the species of organisms which have ever existed on the planet…could be held in a teaspoon and there would still be room left for all the information in every book ever written…” - Dr. Michael Denton (Australian microbiologist)
A list of 60 aspects is , cited as regards the above is https://wng.org/roundups/a-fine-tuned-universe-1617224984https://www.biola.edu/blogs/biola-magazine/2010/can-dna-prove-the-existence-of-an-intelligent-desi https://spaceupper.com/god-dna-proves-presence-of-god-says-scientists/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220402043932/https://godandscience.org/apologetics/designun.html https://www.forbes.com/sites/ethansiegel/2015/08/22/it-takes-26-fundamental-constants-to-give-us-our-universe-but-they-still-dont-give-everything/?sh=62e102bf4b86