Why don't you believe in God?

I’m glad you understand the equal odds of the cards.

So the question is, why are you suggesting we are the royal flush instead of just seemingly ordinary cards?

If you’re astounded that we think it’s just physics, I’m astounded that you think it’s anything more than that. What is so fortuitous about it?

 It's fortuitous for me!  I would think you would feel the same way...  I see existence as a good thing for as long as I get it!   This is the one hand that allows for me to be here right here and right now.

I see so many other options for those natural physical processes and see design.  That all the "Naturally's" you see could have occurred in a myriad of ways, or not at all, and so many other ways couldn't have produced a universe that allows for a little speck of itself to question its own existence.  That all these "Naturally's" that could have been are this one, its more than a mere chance to me, apparently not to you, and that's OK.  I believe this universe was created to foster those little specks because there's a designer out there beyond what this speck can even begin to comprehend that wanted it to be like this. 

That or the one hand this universe was dealt was the one that allowed for such things out of all the other ones than any other set of "Naturally's" would have allowed for.

Humans have pondered this for a very long time.  And as far as I know, nobody's given up on this argument from one side or the other.  You're left trying to argue that the hand we are dealt was the random one we got, and I'm left trying to argue that something bigger is out there that set it up and I've got another reality beyond ours to ponder where it came from.   

Both really prove that there's a lot of unknown out there left to explore.

I can only imagine a multitude of other worlds in this universe with beings pondering the same kind of questions.   

What makes you think it even could have?

The probability of something is the number of times it does happen divided by the number of times it could have happened. Roll a die 600 times and you'll get about 100 sixes - hence the probability of getting a six is 1/6, or 16.666%.

You only have one universe to look at. You have no idea how many different ways it could have turned out, and what fraction of those many ways would allow it to produce life that could ponder the question. In fact you don't even know if it could have turned out differently at all.

You're like a guy who looks at a six and says "wow, that was incredibly lucky!" when you have no idea of how many faces the die has, or how many of them are sixes. If the die has one face and it's a six, then no, it wasn't "lucky" that you rolled a six, it was utterly inevitable. Likewise if the die has a million faces and they're ALL sixes. 

And even if the universe we have is incredibly unlikely, for all you know there's some natural process that forced it into this direction. That's not even without precedent - the great thing about the theory of biological evolution is that it provides a perfect explanation of how incredibly unlikely things can come about if they are broken into many small steps.

Hell, it could even be just random chance. Just think about the multiverse hypothesis. Suppose there's a near-infinite number of universes, each one with different physical laws. Perhaps the vast majority actually are 'barren'. But some fraction of them allow matter and life. Maybe it's one universe in a trillion trillion trillion. Or vastly fewer even than that. But there are still those that allow matter and life, and those are the ones with people in them who wonder why they exist. That's perfectly plausible, would provide a complete explanation, and would depend on random chance. What of it?


And I'm amazed at those who assume massive improbability when there's no reason to. Or think that if it is massively improbable, that proves... something.

But again, a royal flush has the same probability as any hand, but not the same probability as all other hands combined. Which is what makes the royal flush unlikely. We can say with confidence that it's unlikely because we know that there are hundreds of thousands of possible hands that are not royal flushes (649,739 of them, actually).

But how many other possible universes are there? You have no idea. Nobody does. Without knowing, you have no basis to consider it unlikely. And yet, you do anyway. Why? And again, even if it is unlikely... so what? What's that supposed to prove?

That's a foolish sentiment by Sandage. The supernatural does not provide explanations of anything. It doesn't really even attempt to.

Do you have any evidence to the contrary?  All I've heard is "Nature and Physics has to be some way, and this is the one it happens to be."

So here we find ourselves existing in a universe where you demand proof of design because you don't see it and I don't because I see design.  Just as people have done for a very long time.  If either of us could prove such with any degree of certainty we would change the world as we know it. 

No, you do not see design. You choose to label it as design out of personal incredulity. There's a difference.

I see design.  I can't prove design, but I see design.