User talk:SouthWriter/sandbox/An atheist's objections/@comment-257949-20100705211338

The statement in itself 'God did it' is, logically, simpler. But when you think about it, it is actually incredibly complex: God, a non-determined and omnipotent entity of undefined boundaries and limitless capabilities... lots of unknowns there.

What I mean by 'simple' is that it is the result of provable, predictable laws, which will hold true regardless. The idea in and of itself that, over billennia atoms have arranged themselves in such a way to produce us, seems incredibly complex... but, once you know the calculations, you can trace the entire history of the universe using simple laws which will hold true in all but a tiny handful of situations (the singularity of a black hole, for example). Granted, we don't know many of these equations, and have no way of factoring in all the variables at present - but once we know all this we could do the whole thing using (for mathematicians) simple equations that hold true.

Scientists find the idea of it being 'just so' ridiculous. That is not simple. It invokes countless unknowns. For us - i.e., non-creationists - simple means that it can be explained assuredly, even if it is immensely complex as a topic. God would therefore be complicated, as He, She, It, violates all of what we know of the laws of the universe and is subsequently impossible.

I appreciate that this debate is hard to convey over the internet, and am well aware that all I have just written could come across as mixed up and meaningless. To sum it up I suppose I should put: simple = can be explained using what we know, or what we could know; God = not simple, as we can't explain a divine being using our sciences.

By the way, you're completely correct about our theories having holes in them. Science exists to fill those holes. Religion has holes too, mostly those poked by science. Religion can only poke one whole at science, and it is a philosophical one: why the universe began. To which I say, we may well be barking up the wrong tree and the Big Bang is simply another idea to be laughed at by future scientists who have a much better understanding of the universe. Science can change a lot. Religion, at least in terms of the original dogma (in this case, Genesis), doesn't.