Hello
HiiriNothing about the universe suggests there being any gods. Everything in the world works as if there were no gods.
What exactly would be a suggestion of divinity in your eyes? Given that gods are by definition a different level of existence from our own, double-guessing their motiviations and predicting their goals seems a bit difficult to me.
There could be lots we don't know about the fridge either. Who knows, maybe a vortex to an alternate egg dimension opens up every time we close the fridge door. We don't know that.
We judge the rationality of answers on what we know, not what we might not know. Our lack of knowledge is irrelevant.
Well, actually we do not know about that vortex. After all, there could be that vortex, but usually it works in such a way that we do not notice - following a law of balance, for instance, it may be that the eggs we put in there travel to that dimension and an equal number of eggs are expelled. Or it may open, and in most cases, nothing is exchanged - but the opening is still there, usable under the right circumstances.
Exact reason why they sailed west was because they expected to find new trade routes to Asia. The options weren't equally valid at the time. They could observe the world around them and judge the options based on that.
Nope, there were also a lot of people who expected them to drop off the world at that time. And before the explorers set off, most people judged that the earth was flat - because you could stand steadily on it without falling away, for instance.
Sure, nothing exists until shown to exist. (No, I don't mean they poof into existence as soon as encountered)
Oh, so how do you think about quantum physics, or easier, about atoms and molecules. I suppose they did not exist in the Middle Ages because they were not shown to exist yet. Or if you allow for their existence despite not having shown to exist back then, how can you disallow for the existence of divinity only by pointing out that we have not yet shown its existence?
And atoms were proposed even in Ancient Greek, so the search had been on long before the Middle Ages.
Yours,
Deathworks
P.S.: Max White: Why is it useful to know that things fall? Usefulness implies that it can be used for a benefit. How do you define benefit? What is "good" in the sense of "benefit"? Why is that "good"?
And I can point to a medical example to show the limitation of your usefulness argument: If you have an itching spot, scratching yourself is the short-term solution. You can easily see that it gives you short-term relief. But in the long run, it will only cause damage to your skin, resulting in more itching.
Itching, scratching, and irritation are very short-term, so we can observe them easily, but if we take on the world in an objective way, we are talking about years, presumably about infinity. Even if your assumption is doing you good for 100 years, what does that mean if those 100 years are then following by more than 100,000,000 years of agony? Is it still more useful in the long run.
Or look at climate change. Provided that the models are correct, the usefulness of heavy industries is much smaller than was assumed. Sure, you could cheaply mass-produce products. But some decades later, you may see New York drown because of that.
Or look at the credit crash. People built their homes and were happy - useful. Now they can't pay back their credits, they lose their homes and also have tons of debts they hadn't had before - not useful.
My point is that you are arguing only about what you perceive in a short term, but deny the possibility of long term consequences which may completely reverse the short term ones.
EDIT: I know I should give more thought to my posts. Returning to the apple falling, let me point out that the theist claim does not make any statements about whether God will always impose that rule on apples. Therefore, the theist claim does not in itself automatically differ from the gravity claim, because it may just as easily be the result of the assumption that God wants apples to always work that way - and then you have a pattern just as much as with the gravity claim. The initial assumption I proposed did not state this clearly.