The naturalistic view of the universe is that all things came to be as a result of natural laws at work. According to this view, there is no need for a creator god because given sufficient time, natural selection will ultimately bring about whatever, of necessity, needs to exist. It brought about the formation of the universe out of nothing. It brought about the presence of life out of non-living matter. It configured the solar system as needed to support life on Earth. And even your very will is an illusion created by natural laws affecting the veritable rats nest of neurons that is your brain.
Experiments by Libet, Soon, Haynes and others have demonstrated that what is perceived by an individual as free will may well be an after effect of a subconscious decision having already been made. If indeed this is the case, then it would reasonably follow that free will is an illusion, as is all that is born of conscious choice. Your sense of personal identity and conscious awareness, and your intelligence are also therefore illusions. All of these things are the product of natural laws acting upon atoms in your brain. The illusion of consciousness is tricking itself into believing it actually exists when in fact it does not.
To go still further, one can assume that since natural laws acting on chemicals and energies ultimately resulted not only in the formation of human beings, but also directly predetermined every choice they have collectively ever made through the history of mankind. That which by human standards has met the criteria for intelligence when we applied it to ourselves, actually belongs to the collective product of natural selection driven by natural laws. Every scientific revelation, every great work of art, every book and song ever written and monument ever built was predetermined by natural laws at work. Yes, the collective sum of all natural law is an intelligence unto itself. I call this entity The Puppetmaster. He is the naturalistic god. And your will, intelligence, conscious awareness, and sense of personal identity (collectively what some might call your "soul") belong to him. You may rebel against this idea, or you may accept it, depending on which choice The Puppetmaster has predetermined for you.
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That is a fancy description of classical mechanics, which does not agree with observation.
What I propose goes way beyond the scope of classical mechanics.
Uh, care to share some of that stuff you're smoking?
"given sufficient time, natural selection will ultimately bring about whatever, of necessity, needs to exist."
That's not natural selection, which is the mechanism driving evolution and therefore a purely biological phenomenon.
Also a natural material universe is a fact, not a challenge to beliefs in an unevidenced supernatural deity existing outside it, and using inexplicable magic to cause things we haven't yet found explanations for. This is yet another argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy attempting to reverse the burden of proof theists and deists have if they claim any deity exists.
"It brought about the formation of the universe out of nothing."
Nonsense, just because naturalism doesn't accept the existence of unevidenced supernatural claims, does not mean it insists the universe came from nothing. Again this is an argument from ignorance fallacy. It is possible to believe only the material physical universe exists and simultaneously not know how or from what it originated.
After that your post is just an endless list of argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacies.
The material physical universe exists and so does organic life. If you want to add anything to those facts you will need to produce objective empirical evidence. Not simply assert The claim in an argument from ignorance fallacy using a God of the gaps polemic.
The rest of your assumptive theistic verbiage was too tedious to wade through.
Pointing out that reality may differ from your rosy perception of it if we refuse to believe in deities from bronze and iron age superstions is not a compelling argument for their existence.
What objective empirical evidence can you demonstrate for any deity or for the existence of anything other than the natural material universe?
Start there and leave these tedious and fallacious God of the gaps arguments alone. You can't throw a crucifix in here for them lately. It's like every high school apologist went on the same fucking course and are erroneously thrilled at discovering arguments from ignorance as if they were hitherto unknown and are suddenly profound wisdom rather than fallacious nonsense.
Describing 'natural laws' as working, predetermining and intelligent makes them unnatural; requiring a creator with agency of their own.
@Fallen
It might be better to say "what are generally thought of as natural laws"
I am not creating a "God of the gaps" as it were. I am extrapolating upon existing ideas to strongly suggest that the laws that govern evolutionary processes are also responsible for predetermining human behavior even at it's most fundamental levels, and only after these laws affect one in a manner consistent with choice does that choice appear to one as having been made by an act of free will. Subsequently if free will is an illusion, so, logically speaking, is human intelligence. What we perceive as human intelligence is actually the product of natural laws at work and therefore the sum of these natural laws, and not us, must be considered the source of that intelligence (and therefore they are not so 'natural' as some would like to think).
I find it amusing that you use cosmology, evolution, and psychology in the same paragraph.
I shall name thee ..... Shotgun
Easier if you just link your paradigm shifting research, I assume you have been published in a worthy peer reviewed scientific journal and your conclusions are supported by a broad scientific consensus?
...or am I being hopelessly optimistic?
Science can explain (almost) everything about the universe. Plugging in a god is inventing and adding an element that is not required.
The holy grail of physics is the "theory of everything". Nowhere in any valid scientific work related to that topic is the god equation used or required.
I am not plugging in a god. A god is suggested by the findings of experimentation, albeit indirectly.
Suggested? Indirectly? Even you must admit that such an explanation is more than muddy and nowhere close to definitive.
If free will is indeed an illusion, as implied by experiments by Haynes and others, then does it not follow that human intelligence is therefore also an illusion? If this can be considered plausible then since natural laws may then be considered the true deterministic source of all achievements previously accredited to human will and intelligence, then these laws meet the benchmark for intelligence and are therefore not natural at all.
If? If? You know very well that beginning a proposition with conjecture can not hold up.
You are just speculating. I can speculate that invisible pink fluffy bunnies created this universe.
God is no more suggested by the findings than blue universe creating cosmic bunnies. The God of the gaps BS has been done before. You do not get to assert a God into existence without actual evidence of that god. END OF STORY.
"A god is suggested by the findings of experimentation, albeit indirectly."
Hitchens's razor**No it isn't**Hitchens's razor
...this is fun.
If human choice is predetermined by physical laws and not determined by free will, then we must then either conclude that these laws collectively hold the qualities attributed to human choices and achievements (i.e. free will and intelligence) or we must strike the very word "intelligence" from the dictionary as it would cease to have definition. If what we call "intelligence" is in fact at it's source a natural phenomenon then the word is meaningless.
P.S. Are the universes blue or the bunnies? lol
If
A god of the gaps is based on arbitrarily using the concept of god to argue for what science currently has no provable explanation for. I am not doing this. I am logically stating that if A is true then it follows that either B is true or C is true as they are the only rational explanations available. If A> human will (and subsequently human intelligence) is an illusion generated by physical laws acting upon the brain, then either B> these laws collectively possess the quality of intelligence, or C> There is really no such thing as intelligence. There is also D> The interpretation of the experimental data from the Libet, Soon, Fried, and Haynes experiments is incorrect. But nobody here has taken that position either. No argument has been presented here that invalidates my hypothesis.
"I am logically stating that if A is true then it follows that either B is true or C is true as they are the only rational explanations available."
Prove that they are the only options available.
"No argument has been presented here that invalidates my hypothesis."
That is the very definition of an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy. You need to objectively evidence your claims, no one need offer any alternative. This would also necessarily include objective evidence for any deity.
The naturalistic view of the universe does not necessarily describe the formation of the universe out of nothing.
I will concede that. But my primary argument has still not been addressed.
But that hypothesis is one of the legs of your argument. Kick it away, and the stool falls over.
First you have to prove there is a god.
@Extrapolator: If you define intelligence as something that acts contrary to the laws of nature, I don't really have an issue with that, although it would mean that intelligence does not exist.
If you also define humans as mere collections of atoms, then I suppose it may also be true that humans do not exist.
Extrapolator, from your first paragraph:
“The naturalistic view of the universe is that all things came to be as a result of natural laws at work.”
Came to be? Please site your source for this assertion. I just don’t believe that those holding a naturalistic view all think all things ‘came to be’.
“According to this view, there is no need for a creator god because given sufficient time, natural selection will ultimately bring about whatever, of necessity, needs to exist.”
Needs to exist? From where did you get the notion that anything ‘needs to exist’?
“It brought about the formation of the universe out of nothing. It brought about the presence of life out of non-living matter. It configured the solar system as needed to support life on Earth. And even your very will is an illusion created by natural laws affecting the veritable rats nest of neurons that is your brain.”
It?
Must admit, I just couldn’t get beyond your first paragraph.
Re: OP
*steam train approaching*..... *chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga*... Woo-wooooo!.... *chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga*.... WOOO-WOOOOOO!... *chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga*......
@extrapolator
I have to apply xenoview's razor to your claims that a god exist. What objective evidence do you have a god exist? All you have is subjective evidence from your mind that a god exist.
Xenoview's razor
Objective claims requires objective evidence
1. It is actually predicted in neuroscience, that brains may be pre-encoded with "priors" or "simply" configurations of neurons that enable complex calculations, like doing physics calculations or predicting physical events in the world. [See Google-Deepmind/Neuroscience inspired engeenering]
2. For example, you'll notice that a baby can act in a way where it can predict outcomes based on physical interactions in the world, like predicting that a toy tower block will fall, etc. The baby though not a nobel laureate, or a physics undergrad, can make predictions, reasonably because its brain is the product of several thousands of years of evolution, and thereafter, such brains contain "priors" that enable complex actions, without much conscious thought. [See Babies are born with 'intuitive physics' knowledge, says researcher.]
3. What this means, is that subconscious "priors" or "prebaked calculation systems" in brains play a large part in intelligence, but this doesn't mean intelligence is an illusion. These priors as mentioned before, are results of several thousands of years of evolution, that have prebaked prediction algorithm like sequences in brains, as for example, methods for optimizing how a species responds to environmental pressures.
4. In simpler terms, instead of consciously performing physics computations in real time, [given the limit of neurons and connections] nature has reasonably "found" clever ways of pre-encoding these abilities in the forms of particular neuronal connections. So rather than "illusions" these are perhaps best viewed as optimization methods. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
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