How does complexity prove God?

Question

I am an atheist. Now I don't profess myself to be wise as the Bible claims atheists do. I don't claim to know if God exists or not. The only thing I am sure of is that I don't know. My question is, how does complexity prove God exists? Complexity says absolutely nothing about the existence of God. Complexity certainly does not prove that it was designed. And besides that, the way something looks is completely subjective. It may look designed to you, but it does not look designed to me. The way something looks is not scientific evidence. Now I have no problem with faith. But keep faith out of schools please. If you want to learn about God, go to church. Churches these days are popping up like McDonalds, don't tell me you can't find one.

fanoftheredletter. Your basolutely correct. They are making educated guesses. THATS THE WHOLE PURPOSE OF SCIENCE. And then your going to sit there and tell me that religion is not an educated guess.

Answer 1

You have many questions there. Let me try to answer the main one. Have you heard of the theory of irreducible complexity? Theists say this is another proof of God's existence.

Here is a presentation on that theory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity

Peace and blessings!

Answer 2

I have encountered problems with the Intelligent Design Theory also. What I do recognize through this Design theory, is that there are still questions and valid arguments against Neo Darwinism. I am no biologist, but through my research, both sides have openly stated that Darwinian Evolution still does not have all the answers and ID makes it apparent how evolution does not account for the information in the DNA or on the cellular level, some of the "machines" cant function without all their parts, which evolution cant explain. These are just some of the examples but there are more and they are much more detailed obviously. But it is scientific, it makes empirical observations based on the natual world, which is within the science standards. And from the accumulation of evidence it has made an inference that there is evidence of an intelligent cause. This is not unusual for science to make such inferences. But why not follow where the facts lead us? I do have trouble with this aspect of the theory, i feel as though it is almost "jumping the gun". I feel that maybe future advances in technology etc. might give us insight into these questions of irreducible complexity etc. But its also important to keep in mind that science is not the Truth and that maybe the science standards should be challenged? But that is another subject. And any religious agenda that may or may not be affiliated with ID can not be a way to refute an argument. Motives are irrelevant. Just as people argue a religious agenda for ID, that same reasoning could be used against Darwinism. The only way to refute an argument is either the facts or logics are false. So I encourage you to research and find the facts and logics, and keep an open mind into the Philosphy of Science, and think about challenging the defintion of science, and to consider that science should be open to whatever cause best explains the evidence.

And regarding complexity relating to God, ID does not speculate who the designer is. So yes you are right, irreducible complexity i.e. ID, does not prove God exists.

For more information on Intelligent Design, I suggest you go to the Discovery Institute website. And there you will find all your questions about the theory.

Answer 3

Before anyone else says it, the claim of proponents of Intelligent Design is that IRREDUCIBLE complexity proves design. The problem (apart from the fact that it doesn't) is that there are no biological systems that are clearly irreducibly complex. The ones that have been studied could function (often as something completely different) if one building block was taken away.

As for the watchmaker argument, it misses a key point: we find watches and recognize design because we know what they are, or have seen other similar things. But the question is whether an eye, or a carrot, is like a watch. Since the first human witnesses recorded their testimony, life was already here, so we have no basis for comparison.

In other words, you are right, such arguments don't work. If only more Christians would understand that, it might help them to have a faith that is not opposed to science, reason and education.

Answer 4

First of all I don't believe in athiests. We all have a god whether it be God (Biblical God, creator, all powerful and all) or a god we made, even ourselves. Complexity does prove intelligent design whether you believe that to be God or some alien or whatever. All matter falls into disarray without some kind of maintenance or upkeep by some sort of intelligence. Nothing complex, say even a car, comes about by chance. Yet a car is much less complex than an insect eye. Academia is willing to say the insect eye came by chance while a car obviously had a designer. I don't understand that. It makes no sense to say that something more complex would happen by chance while something less complex had a designer.

As for your statement that churches should teach faith and schools shouldn't. Personally I believe families should teach fact and live by faith. The church is not the all in all when it comes to God. Most churches don't even teach the Bible and many don't know what faith is. Faith is believing what you can't see with your eyes but what you can know in your heart. That's why a personal relationship with Jesus is so important. It is something only you can establish. I can't force other people to find God or trust Jesus with their lives. They have to seek that themselves and one way to do that is understanding the Bible in context and not having a closed mind to the things in that book. Most athiests have closed their minds to anything outside what the eye can see or the ear can hear or the finger can touch. That is not all this world is and you are fooling yourself to think it is. There is design in an atom and a prescribed way that those atoms will come together. Sorry this is getting long please email me if you have any questions.

Answer 5

And out come all the watch / house / car Must-Have-A-Designer arguments.


These are all fundamentally flawed because evolution can only apply to objects that can reproduce themselves.

When was the last time a cog grew into a watch? A shed into a house? When was the last time you had to throw a bucket of water over a couple of VWs to stop them doing what they were doing?


Evolution can only apply to something that creates a copy of itself.


The argument of design from complexity means that the complex universe must have had a complex designer. But where did that designer come from? It is a complex being, by exactly the same argument it MUST have had a designer too.

And so you end up with an infinite number of designers each designing the next designer.

This is patently absurd, and it would take an infinite time to create the last designer to design our universe. It could never happen.

First Cause for the universe is a poser, at least for most of us whose thoughts are limited to a microscopic 4 D view of the multiverse. But the argument from complexity is clearly not a valid answer.

Answer 6

Is not exactly about complexity, Is about looking at your surroundings, God is essence, is not about a design, it goes way deeper than that, see you science cannot give you an answer for faith because faith is not tangible, is perception, you mentioned the bible, Have you done more research, churches are not the same as belief or faith, remember this if you want to know seek, and you will find the answers, Try the Qura'an that might solve a lot of questions or debates you might have in your mind, even the scientific ones :) and after that If you want to have a good debate contact me

Good luck

Answer 7

The normal progression of everything is entropy-driven. Disintegration. Deterioration. Complexity becoming more and more simple. So without a creator actively at work in the past, and currently, the current complexity of the universe, and the current state of the earth, would be as likely to exist as a junkyard spontaneously spawning a brand-new Boeing 747.

To truly discount the presence of God, one would have to believe that that could happen. (Not to mention many far MORE complex situations.)

Answer 8

It is not complexity that proves God's existance; rather, it is simple common sense. Go outside and look up at the moon. Look at the scope of our universe. Scientists pretend to understand it, but they don't. Watch anything on the Science Channel...they are just making educated guesses.

The heavens declare the glory of God; this is more than just a Bible quote, it is also the plain truth.

That the universe and all that is in it is more complex than we could imagine, this only lends to the "theory" of God being the only feasable explanation for the beginning of our universe. To say our universe had no beginning would mean that our universe were in a regenerative state, and as any scientist will tell you, our universe is in exactly the opposite state.

Anyways, there are many many scientific improbabilities and impossibilities when you look at any theory not involving a creator.

Answer 9

They will use the watchmaker example more than likely, but it really comes down to this, "I just cannot believe that something so complex as a human being can arise through chance" They do not believe that complexity can arise through chance because of the unlikeliness of it happening, which the calculations for deriving the probability are backwards and do not have enough info to make a good calculation.

The watchmaker example is flawed in that when you say that something is made you really are saying that we don't find it naturally in nature, ie watch, car, painting etc. Well they apply that same logic to nature, so in effect they are comparing nature to nature. So they can only say that nature is natural, that or we need to come up with a new standard as to how we judge whether something is natural or not.

Answer 10

"Irreducible complexity" means that an organism has such complexity that evolution could not have produced it. If it takes, and it does, 30,000 amino acids and enzymes to make your blood clot, an organism with only 29.999 could not survive to "evolve" to 30,000. Matter of fact, it could not have gotten to even 1 by evolution. It had to have erupted onto the scene, or have been created, by something intelligent and powerful enough to create it from scratch.
A human cell is such a structure. If only one function of the cell is missing it cannot perform its function, or even exist, So how did it evolve from something less complex to more complex? Impossible.
Evolution is, and has been for some time, a defunct theory. Why are you always the last to know? Go figure.