@Setanta,
Quote:Some people will never accept any answer which doesn't include their magic sky daddy. Idiotic remarks about London and New York are false analogies, because the situation of the rise of human civilization is not analogous to the inexorable results of natural selection
Nobody is arguing the results of natural selection. It is a very complex system running inside a very complex chemical and quantum mechanical system that in turn is determining the system we observe as embedded layers of biospheres. Very successful in getting us here and is still working.
I have a hard time believing that all those layers of complexity came into existence from an initial explosion caused by gravity called the big bang (and we don't even know what causes gravity so how do know it even existed before there was matter before the big bang? Sounds like a leap of faith.)
Natural selection is a system built up of thousands of interacting systems that are really doing there job. We all agree.
Are you saying that if I blow a universe up enough times eventually I will get this same universe we live in with a bunch of physical properties and laws that nobody can explain why the even exist (though understanding them is necessary for understanding the creation of matter since gravity is the key component in creating it) like, gravity, the fine structure constant, the strong nuclear force, the weak electromagnetic force, the origin of matter, the origin of life, the origin of intelligence, diversity of life. etc. . .
Or I can observe the pattern I see today that all new complexity introduced into the universe like cities and civilization came about by human intelligence (which we are now using to write algorithms that organize complexity in computers for us) or it is coming about by a complex algorithm we call natural selection, that if the pattern of all algorithms being created today is followed into the ancient past, had an ancient author of greater intelligence and scope of influence than us.
Why do you think we have gravity and the laws and the constants of physics? What causes them to be what they are? How did the systems that they naturally arise out of come into existence.
I think we have a better chance of observing a group of spider monkeys lucking out and accidentally building a city with automobiles. (given enough time. Lets run a computer simulation to speed it up)