Burden of Proof [I Am Not An Atheist]

When atheists asked me for proof that God exists, I always tell them that the proof lies with them. After all there are so many obvious signs of design in the universe - such as the extreme fine tuning of so many forces - that unless someone can show beyond doubt it’s a cosmic accident I will not violate my common sense.

SW-User

Though I already know this will fall on deaf ears, I’ll say it anyway...

We don’t begin by accepting every claim as true. If we did, we run the risk of holding contradictory beliefs. That’s the purpose of the burden of proof - we must hold to a standard of evidence, otherwise there’s no way to differentiate between true and not true.

Also, fine tuning? Where?

To start with, humans have so many design flaws that it’s laughable to conceive we were created by a God. We use the pharynx for breathing and eating making it incredibly easy to choke (other species have separated these functions), we have terrible spines which bend near the top which causes stress on the lower spine (around 80% of people end up with back problems because of this), women have very narrow pelvises which makes childbirth an awful experience (it was the leading cause of death for a millennia); too many teeth, which again historically led to infection and subsequent death before modern dentistry; we can’t synthesise vitamin C which is a real issue for our immune systems, we don’t have flexible knees, we have a blind spot in our eyes, too many sweat glands... the list goes on.

We can go on forever about the “fine tuning” of the universe, but there’s no hypothesis or theories behind this claim - just a very crude observation. You have no evidence of a designer, nor a comparable universe to compare with our own.

The best answer is often “I don’t know, let’s find out” - there are many mysteries to be solved about our universe, but they’re not explained away by the proposition of a “designer”.

newjaninev2 · 56-60, F

@AkioTsukino [quote]what are the odds[/quote]

Vanishingly minute... if you’re using hindsight i.e. that you asking what are the odds of this particular configuration of life within this particular configuration of this particular universe.

But [b]only in hindsight[/b], and the reality is that if there is anything at all then it need not have been this.

Given that my parents were a fertile and fecund couple, and engaging in acts of reproduction (I’ll take a moment to get past that0, then it as all but inevitable that they would produce a child. That was all but inevitable. What was [i]never[/i] inevitable was that the child would be me... until it was me

If things were not the way they are, then they would be different.

newjaninev2 · 56-60, F

@AkioTsukino Claiming creationism in no way addresses evolution... and for a simple reason

Evidence

The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection explains the evidence.

The ‘goddidit’ of creationism merely tries to explain the evidence away, so explains nothing (not even itself)