You are quite correct. There are no metaphysical accidents. That is precisely my point.

When you have tried to create life as I am currently doing, and you begin to realize all of the constraints, any one of which is fatal, you will eventually realize that Earth evolving into a planet suitable for intelligent life by a series of accidents is unlikely.

You are correct. It is not a contradiction. That is why I referred to it as a "seeming contradiction". The next sentence about light harvesting made the two situations different, as both of us pointed out. We are not in disagreement here. My main point in stressing what I did was to help dbhalling's thermodynamic arguments in his upcoming book.

Indeed they are not. Prof. England's thermodynamic probabilities are not miracles, which I have not ever claimed a belief in. An event with probability of 10^(-30) or less without a rational cause would be the rare event that would have to be considered a miracle. When any exceedingly rare event occurs, one has to look for a rational cause.

Such arguments have been dismissed in such classes, but never truly disproven. Perhaps, if there is a future life, we will settle this debate, but not before.

Effects within the universe do happen by causes, as has repeatedly been explained to you and which you continue to ignore in your assertions of animism as a substitute.

The bizarre assertions of imagined space aliens now introduced are just as arbitrary as the rest of your claims and do not deserve or require further discussion of what "planned" your space aliens or the rest of the contradictions and shear arbitrariness, all clinging to an obstinate premise of animism and supernatural intelligence rigging the universe. Yes, it is shear mysticism.

The "universe" of everything that is -- i.e., all of existence as such in contrast to a configuration of the physical universe of planets, stars, etc. -- does not have a "cause" and is not an "effect". Existence exists and that's it. It simply is. There can be no "explanation" of how or why existence exists as an "effect" in terms of something outside it, i.e., in terms of that which does not exist. Non-existence is not a kind of existence preceding or outside of existence. The concept of explanation presupposed existence. To use the term otherwise is another stolen concept fallacy. Explanation and identification of causes are by reference to what exists and which you already know, not to an other-than-existence, supernatural plans, or imagined space aliens, which is all gibberish and not explanation at all.

That is irrelevant to the subject. Your laboratory difficulties are no justification for your metaphysical claims.

Once again, rejection of the unproven and arbitrary does not have to proved.

That there is "much that we do know" stands alone. It is not what you are claiming when you assert a supernatural "plan". When something is not known then stop trying to rationalize what "must" be. You don't know and that's it. The onus of proof is on he asserts the positive, and that applies to assertions about what is claimed to be "possible" in reality.

He's also not "swayed" by rational explanation. Group approval versus obstinate clinging to fallacy while ignoring objections is a false alternative. Individualism does not mean being "different" for the sake of being different, which is not "heroic", is no argument defending a fallacious position, and is no excuse to repeatedly ignore the explanations against it. The dramatic pronouncements of "standing alone", etc. are irrelevant and evasive of the arguments not addressed.

JB: "What is remarkable is that the universe is tailor made for human development. Does that seem like an accident?"

There are no metaphysical "accidents". The claim that the universe is tailor made FOR anything is baseless and meaningless. Things do what they do because of their identity. Causality is not teleological.

His circular argument is not evidence for itself. A lack of understanding of the causal factors is not evidence for a god. Unlike primitive animists, you know that there is causality independent of someone choosing and planning.

The difference between a closed system and an open system importing energy, and the difference between equilibrium and non-equilibrium thermodynamics, have been understood for a very long time. It's not a contradiction.

And it doesn't mean that the succession of events in evolution were by metaphysical chance. There were causes for the sequence of coins you tossed, too, but you don't know what they are or how to predict them. That is why you use a 50-50 probability for the two faces of a symmetric coin, not that one face or the other appears causelessly in a miracle requiring a supernatural planner.

Feynman also discussed the notion of probability of a particular sequence of digits on a license plate and how it had to be some sequence with 100% certainty with no surprise.

We have no idea if there are or have been other forms of life. That is why scientists are looking for possible conditions of water, etc. elsewhere.

His thermodynamic probabilities are not your chain of supposed miracles against "the odds" and are not metaphysical probabilities defying all primary and secondary causes, as described previously.

Your "unequivocal statements" are baseless. You are misusing concepts of probability and statistics, ignoring identity and causality, arbitrarily invoking imagined "suggestions" as alleged "evidence" in a circular argument, and repeatedly ignoring what has been explained in response to you. The classical, well-known "argument from design" is a logical fallacy and has been known as such for centuries. Any undergraduate philosophy student can see through these crudely naive rationalizations.

Atheism is not believing in the supernatural. That is a rejection of the arbitrary, not a positive statement requiring proof and not agnosticism. Whether or not one additionally says some particular notion of god outright does not exist depends on what the notion is. If it is meaningless or contradictory then there is no such thing.

Yes the "default" position is to acknowledge that you don't know that which you don't know, and to reject gibberish claiming otherwise.

Regarding creation of "life", I make tissue scaffolding that my colleagues colonize with cells. At this point, we barely know the basic requirements that the cells need. In five years or so, I will say that the field has evolved enough to be called biomedical ENGINEERING. We lack a basic understanding of all the control variables, let alone their proper levels, although that is changing very rapidly. Try making "life" sometime, and you will discover that even using existing life forms, it is extremely difficult. Try doing it without existing life forms, and then you claim to be a deity.

If CG and khalling are saying, "When I reject the assertion, I'm saying "I've never seen any evidence of that." I'm not saying it never could have happened or I'm on the fence about whether it happened. I've just seen nothing like that." This is a reasonable statement, but it is not atheism. Atheism is a conscious, positive statement that there is no god. I need to watch my terminology, too. It got me in trouble tonight. The default position is not knowing, period.

The default position is not knowing. It takes a conscious act to think and perhaps eventually know something to be true.

I am unequivocally stating that the nature of the universe has some random evolutionary aspects about it. I am also unequivocally saying that the nature of the universe suggests a conscious architect and that its multiscale degree of order WITH the careful positioning of worlds such as ours that would be capable of supporting life is the evidence. Evolution of life forms certainly has some random aspects to it. However, the positions of planets with respect to stars, the precise ratios of chemical elements in those planets such that life could exist, etc. requires so many things to have gone right that those odds would have been astronomically long.

OK, thanks. I have been too busy reading too many comments on this post.

If you are right, then we are likely alone in the universe. A few million miles off here or there, and life just doesn't develop.

I don't think the planning was SUPERnatural at all. I think we are the colony of an ancient race of beings that evolved far further eons ago and was capable of space travel. When we have evolved far enough as a species, as Herb7734 writes below, in hundreds if not thousands of years, we may be capable of creation on an order of magnitude that is far beyond what we can right now.

Created objects that we make exist because of the will and the mind (wisdom and intelligence) of us, their creators. Are we to believe that something as massive as a universe is an effect that happened without a cause? To believe that requires more faith than I am capable of. It is utterly ridiculous and should be rejected out of hand, period.

What's a good name for that default position? (I call it Atheism, but I admit there is no clear non-confusing name for it.)

Yes, I did miss it. I came in in the middle. I will go back.