Quote from: odolvlobo on Today at 01:27:08 AM

Quote from: BADecker on July 16, 2020, 08:45:04 PM

1. Your classification of the universe as a machine would allow anything to be classified as a machine, so it is not meaningful. - You are starting to get it. Even energies lever off other energies.
2. You have not shown that a machine must have a maker and cannot exist without one. You assume it based on your biased observations. Lack of observations of a black swan do not prove that one doesn't exist. - There is no example whatsoever of a machine existing without a maker. Yet there are countless examples of machines where we know who the maker is. Scientifically, when the odds are zero in one direction, and countless in the other direction... science considers that to be proof.

Your "countless examples" consist only of man-made machines. What about machines that are not man-made? Can you show that they also have makers? There are certainly many more examples of machines that are not man-made than there are of man-made machines, so if it were actually true that you could use odds to prove something in this case, you would still be wrong.

Can you show even one example of a machine that you absolutely know does not have a maker? Our vast experience is that machines have makers, without even one example of a machine not having a maker.

Quote from: odolvlobo on Today at 01:27:08 AM

Quote from: BADecker on July 16, 2020, 08:45:04 PM

3. You say that a god must be the creator of the universe because it is able to create it. That does not preclude something else from creating the universe. Perhaps your god found or inherited or even stole the universe after something else created it?

I didn't really say that. If something else created the universe, then the "something else" is God. Why? The nature of the universe is such that it would take a God by our dictionary and encyclopedia definition of "God" to create it. My god doesn't have anything to do with it. We are talking about God... He who is everybody's God... even the God of those who don't understand that God exists.

You don't know that the universe was created by the entity that you call "God". The fact that "the nature of the universe is such that it would take a God [to create it]" does not imply that God created it.

You seem to be attempting to bring my God into it. My God is not applicable. The Creator is simply God. Machines have makers. The machine universe is complex enough that a man can't create it, except, perhaps, if he is God. That wouldn't be you, would it?

Quote from: odolvlobo on Today at 01:27:08 AM

You believe that God created it because you assume that there is and always has been exactly one entity (God) capable of creating the universe. I reject that assumption because there is no good reason to accept it.

Here is the good reason to accept it. We, being of the universe, only know the things of the universe. God, in creating the universe would have to be outside of it during the creation of it. We know only one thing about outside-the-universe. That one thing is "outside-the-universe." Since God created the universe, and since He was outside at the time He created, and since the outside is one (at least to our understanding), God is One.

Quote from: odolvlobo on Today at 01:27:08 AM

Furthermore, you are begging the question. Your statement "If something else created the universe, then the 'something else' is God" defines God as that which created the universe, and elsewhere you try to prove that God created the universe. In other words, you are trying to prove that God created the universe by using a definition of God as the creator of the universe.

Actually, you are giving God an additional name. You are calling Him "God," and you are calling Him "Something Else." Machines have makers.

Cool