Fair enough, I can understand this. So are you saying that within naturalistic processes there can also be determination.
Yes, our current universe is for-everyday-purposes deterministic on a macro-scale - and, quite possibly, fully deterministic on a micro-scale too; so that's not a problem, particularly if you invoke an omnipotent creator.
Because the same method of applying chance probabilities for a multiverse can also apply to a single universe if we find there is only one universe. A multiverse is introduced to spread the chance probabilities of physical parameters from a single universe to many universes. But if there is no multiverse then the chance probabilities of many parameters still apply but to our single universe. So the same logic and method applies to both situations.
Well, no. Not only do we not know the probabilities for any particular type of universe in a multiverse, but even if we had a multiverse model with which we could calculate such probabilities, we couldn't apply it to a universe that wasn't part of the multiverse.
An analogy - if you have card printed by a machine that can print cards of a set number of types, and is set to print a certain % of each type of card, then even if you can't actually examine any other cards, you can examine the machine to find out what % of each type it is set to print and so learn the chances of your card being the type it is. But if all you have is a single card
that was not printed by that machine, you can't do that.
I agree but we can also consider if there was some creative agent not necessarily God or just conclude that some sort of intelligence was behind things.
You could certainly posit a creative agent as the source of the physical laws, but that makes the problem orders of magnitude worse, you've gone from one unanswered question to a whole new ontology full of unanswerable questions; why would you do that - unless you have some prior emotional commitment to such an agent? Do you not think it is more sensible just to say, "We don't yet know", or, if you must speculate, to extrapolate based on our existing knowledge of the universe?
Just as some say that the universe is full of math and that this points to some intelligent mind rather than an accidental chance event. The physical laws and the math don't create anything they just describe what is seen, They don't tell us how things happened.
As I said, people often invoke intelligent agents to account for things they can't explain or don't understand. As you say, mathematics and physics are tools we've devised to describe how the universe behaves; but I think they
can tell us how things happened if we can establish that they're consistently accurate in similar contexts.
I think the idea of God goes deeper than just an invention ...I don't think we can dismiss things as easily as saying God is an invention. It affects us across all areas of life and has been with us from an very early time.
Monotheism is relatively recent compared to animism, nature spirits & elementals, and polytheism, and is significantly different. Most of them have been abandoned as rational explanations were discovered for the things they were intended to explain. In that respect, monotheistic deities are left plugging the gap of the remaining major unexplained issue, the origin of the universe, and a moral and emotional support role. Many of us live quite happily without it.
The 'affects all areas of life and has been around a long time' argument appears very weak, considering that from a cultural and historical perspective, it looks like just what you'd expect from a human invention - multiple differing and changing beliefs and interpretations that lag behind social and cultural changes, bulked out with ritual and organisational struggles for power and control, squabbling over sacred texts and their interpretations, regular schisms, claims that this or that event was divine intervention, and no evidence that any of it is other than imagination.
There are other areas which give support from a psychological and cognitive perspective which I wont go into but it is not as simple as you make out and science/evolutionary origins cannot account for it completely.
I agree that supernatural and superstitious beliefs can have psychological benefits for some people. But what things do you feel science can't produce plausible accounts for? No need to go into detail - if you've got links or references I can check that out myself.
That would be covered in what I am referring to above but that is opening up a bigger can of worms for this thread. A case can be made for it being more relevant than magic.
No, don't move the goalposts; not 'more relevant', more 'logical and rational'. You made the claim, so make the case.
As I said this is something that is a part of being human as much as breathing air and eating for our physical needs.
No, it's not. Huge numbers of people live normal lives without it. I agree many, if not most, people have tendencies towards the attribution of hidden agency and superstitious or magical thinking, but there are quite reasonable explanations for why that is the case.
