“You can believe what you wish but it would not be natural for one entity to always do x when encountering a natural phenomena and a second entity does the same when encountering a certain phenomena but a third entity which consists solely of the first two does just the opposite when encountering the same natural phenomena.”
Well it’s not true that I can believe what I wish unless I am not concerned with the truth. If I am then I have to believe what can be validated with logic and reason from perceptions of what exists. I don’t know why you say that the behavior of Hydrogen, Oxygen and water is unnatural when we know they do behave that way from observing them in nature. So, unnatural how? The fact is that when elements combine they take on different, often radically different properties. Sulfuric acid is made of Sulfur and oxygen. Sulfur can be used as a medicine and Oxygen keeps you alive. you can’t live without it. But if you breath Sulfuric acid or try to use it as medicine it will have dire consequences. Scientist do understand why water expands when it freezes and contracts when it melts and it is not a mystery at all but a result of the way the molecules align themselves when they become a solid. I am sure there are other examples of this with other molecules. I haven’t studied it so I don’t know what they are but even if water is the only chemical that does this it would still not be unnatural and it wouldn’t be proof of anything other than that water is unique in that respect.
“You’re quite dismissive of something that, mathematically, violates extremely long odds - like the odds of Buster Douglas knocking out Mike Tyson 999 times out of 1,000.”
I dismiss all such arguments about the extremely long odds of the world being the way it is. It is silly to talk about the odds of something that has already happened. The odds are 100%. It is silly to talk about what the universe would be like if it were different. It is what it is and there was no chance of it being different. If the universe were different to the extent that life were impossible we would not be here to argue about it. The fact is that we are here and so the chances of life are 100%.
Here is something equally amazing. What are the odds that all of your ancestors would survive long enough to reproduce going back over 180,000 years. If any one of them had been sucked down in quicksand or fallen out of a tree and broken their neck or succumbed to one of the many diseases you wouldn’t be here. All of them had to survive and find a mate and be fertile so that you could be here. The fact that you are means the odds were 100%. The point is it is pointless to talk about what were the odds after the fact.
The fact is that the argument from design and the fine tuning argument and the cosmological argument have all be refuted, shown to be logically invalid, but people go on using them because they want to believe and they don’t care that they are fallacious arguments and useless as proof of God.
It does not take faith to not believe in god. It does take intellectual honesty and an intransigent mind. I have examined all of the arguments for the existence of God and found them to be invalid or inconclusive so that is why I don’t believe. I laugh when I see these threads about atheism being a religion based on faith. If it were true it would only prove that atheists were just as irrational as believers.
Well said.
I find that to be an extremely week answer. We know that thousands of family strains did not survive because, at one time or another, the reproductive cycle broke down or the only surviving child died. History is littered with examples. So the fact that my ancestors and yours were not among them only makes us blessed, not in any way better suited for survival than the ones who perished.
I can accept that the odds of anything that has already happened is 100% but it turns a blind eye to all the other more likely possibilities that should or could have happened. It's like saying the odds of me winning last night's lottery are 100% if I just so happened to have the right combination of numbers, ignoring all the millions of other lottery tickets which did not.