nature's form of population control. Eliminate out of control population growth and most of humanities "problems" solve themselves.

However, thinning the herd today will cause far too much grief.

Had your suggestion occurred a thousand years ago, I believe, with you, that most of today's problems would not exist.

However, the one thing missing in your path to a better world is human nature. The planet's ecology would have been fine. But the tyrants would still have existed. And always will.

All the laws of nature and physics. Life evolved, leading to us flawed humans. There is no intelligence behind any of it. Just randomness and natural selection.

We have evidence of that natural story. There is no evidence at all for the other thing. No evidence, no reality.

It's pretty simple, really. Animal life has intelligence. Humans have intelligence. The universe has none. It has fundamental laws that set things in motion.

Hi MM:

As a devout agnostic, I really don't have an answer to the how/why/when/who/what of reality.

Nonetheless I was just having some fun with the concept of Trump being the "almighty."

Having said this, I suspect there is some incomprehensible "awareness" that we cannot grasp. Intelligence is an inadequate word, but somewhere, somehow, it seems to me that sentience is embedded in whatever this thing is we call "the universe." We will perhaps never know for sure, but how else to explain out own sentience?

Ample evidence of the forces of nature, however, exists. Our own intelligence and creative nature leads us to imagine that something as vast and complex as the universe must have been "created." That is a flaw in our reasoning, I believe. We are not competent to make such an assumption, and there is no evidence to support such an assumption.

The path to our human sentience can easily be followed in the evolutionary process and the development of the brain in that process. Our intelligence exists because it is a factor in our survival. Other creatures also have intelligence, albeit less, perhaps.

We are intelligent enough to come up with the concept of some universal creator, but have found no evidence of such a thing at all. It is an artifact of human imagination. Lacking any knowledge or evidence of the beginnings of the universe, we have imagined some entity that created it, because we need to understand. We have fooled ourselves into believing that to be true.

I would also add that we are evolved from the species that came before us, all of which clearly had an overpowering will to survive. Otherwise, we would not be here. Pretty simple concept.

Seems to me that it would follow logically from this heritage that once a creature (us) become intelligent enough to understand the inevitability of each individuals eventual demise (non-survival), it began crafting stories it could tell itself that provided some sort of mechanism by which it could survive eternally.

That's why every religion has an afterlife story, and why it's so easy for religions to find adherents, fundamentally. You won't find a popular religion that doesn't promise 'eternal life' of some sort.

It's in our genes to 'want to survive'. We'd need magic of some sort to be 'real' ... for that to happen.

Hence ... magic in the form of religion.

how amazing that it all appears to be fine-tuned, (constants, etc.) enough for this experience to emerge as such and for complex and intelligent life to evolve and thrive.

Not all scientists or philosophers yield to the confirmation bias of skepticism for its own sake. In fact, I think science is really about making such assertions as certain and factual. There is much we do not know about how the Universe works in part or as a hole.

Of course, there is some evidence worth considering with an open, inquisitive mind. Often, in conservative scientific circles there are biases that provide a sort of blinder where those scientists won't even look at potential evidence on certain matters and that usually loses its grip as those older scientists, (and people who have a prejudice) die off. There are scientists who point that problem out and others who note that, if some proposed ideas about how things function are true, (relating to consciousness and the hard problem with are not anywhere near solved) that would have a major impact on current theories.

I prefer to assign a percentage of probability that something is true or false rather than express to people my own biases about an assumed certainty only because I don't think that is really the purpose and nature of the empirical method or discovery and critical thought. For that reason I am very skeptical of skeptics who are skeptical for the sake of skepticism alone. I would cite James Randi as an example of that and many skeptics have pointed that out.

In that case, questions about the potential inherit intelligence of the Universe and its laws are better left open for debate and investigation rather than being subject to a Grand Inquisitor with a personal agenda, since this issue can be both scientific and transcendent to religious strictures entirely. In other words, a personal creator is not required and things are just emerging naturally as mentioned, but from or with intelligence and I don't think that is an offensive inducement for anti-theists to lump sum into their arguments or who conveniently categorize items like this into the intelligent design category that is often used to propagate creation beliefs.

I encourage everyone to find out for themselves and have an open mind. Some skeptics do not do that and present a specious, cut-and-dried case that is disingenuous and fallacy-prone. It depends on what view is applied to the subject at hand. For instance, the Holographic Universe has fundamental implications beyond our ordinary, conceptual ideas about reality itself, (and hence, the theories we extrapolate from our data). There are many views with which scientists and philosophers LOOK at the information we have so far.

Fine-tuned universe

The premise of the fine-tuned universe assertion is that a small change in several of the dimensionless physical constants would make the universe radically different. As Stephen Hawking has noted, "The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron. ... The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life."[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_universe

Also the book bio-centrism goes into the perfect setup that we are in and proposes that it is that way to produce life. For those who still like to think and ponder without having minds that are made-up, Lanza makes a good case for his hypothesis that is worthy of consideration and critique.

https://www.robertlanzabiocentrism.com/

I would also add that there are more things in heaven and on Earth that are dreamed of in our philosophies, (and I could provide hundreds of valid resources to peruse that illustrate that) and that's exciting and open to the greater discoveries yet to come. Donald D. Hoffman has hit on one potential theory, and it actually makes sense, in his book The Case Against Reality.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/the-illusion-of-reality/479559/

[Disclaimer: I am not a theist, atheist, anti-theist, agnostic nor a Gnostic.]

Show me some evidence, not just thought experiments. Thanks.

That support your overlay and summation of what you consider to be factual because it appears to be a form of metaphysical realism. An opinion like that holds little ground when it is not supported by some clear references in regards to your particular interpretation.

I assume you know the difference between the quanta, (quantitative) nature of the physical science in contrast to various interpretations and qualia involved in making emphatic statements about the interpretations and presenting them as facts. I usually preface statements with, from what we know or in light of the best evidence we have so far. I don't consider science to be a dogmatic tool, well, because it isn't that to me. Of course, you know the difference between speculation, an hypothesis, a theory and a fact. Theories are not necessarily a fact, of course.

You may have jumped the gun because not all that I presented there was based solely on thought experiments as you are implying, but you would have to look at the evidence or science that led to the interpretations. Do that first and then present your refutations and references. All three are scientific thought, not even mere philosophy, per se. I would think you would be the first to respect scientists and their interpretations of data.

I didn't notice any examples or evidence of what you are promoting there as factual, but consider it more of an opinion from a layman with a bias and that's fine. If you are familiar with Relativity and Quantum Mechanics enough to understand the implications and difficulty in interpreting it, (as per the pioneers who brought it forward) what it actually means, then that should be enough since anyone who can fully explain QM and how it relates to classical physics doesn't understand it well at all, i.e., non-locality, the uncertainty principle, etc.

Oh, and I am not out to convince you of anything here. I am adding counterpoint for the sake of argument and as a cogent response. Your beliefs are not my problem

Thanks.

But to reiterate the gag in my OP. "What if Donald Trump created the universe?"

Of course, none of us may never grasp that concept, nor understand that there is actually an entity that we call "the universe."

But whatever "matrix-like" existence we consider to be reality, what a horrible nightmare it would be if a total moron like Trump, were the creator and the manipulator in charge.

Actually, if this were so, the mystery of being would make sense.

“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.” -- Douglas Adams

Perhaps we evolved to live in the universe that came about - not the other way around.

posted this in a fb thread this morning-
ya know, i have a thing about evolution, and there is a new theory about homo sapiens basically becoming dominate because they reached domestication. that our features changed just like wolf/dog's did. they are calling it 'survival of the friendliest', tho i think cutest is a better word. thing is, they also talked about dogs, and that the big thing was that they were able to control their violence. not breed it out, but control it, target it. so, really, it was survival of those that controlled lethal violence. so, if you have wondered if we are devolving, the answer seems to be a clear yes.

Aggression against competition, improving our killing ability against fang and claw and our lust for meat to feed our offspring has enabled us to stand on the brink of sending our spawn to the stars.

Bow down galaxy, here we come!

- Oscar Wilde.

Sophia, the Archon of Knowledge, had a Son with Darkness. She abandoned this Son, leaving him to grow up without guidance. It was this insane Son that we know as the Creator.

When Sophia saw what her demented Son had created, she was shocked to learn what He had done.

Every creature of His Creation must kill and consume other life in order to survive.