Subjective. You see artistry, I see nature and physics
Exactly, I see nature and physical patterns, mathematical patterns which reveal the beauty of mathematical potentials. Not intelligent, not motivated, no plan or program, just mathematically ordered patterns.
I do contradict myself when I look at the night sky and express awe at its majestic vista but deep down the pragmatic me is mumbling 'they are just balls of burning gas'
On the contrary, seeing the Sun as a ball of burning gas is literally a superficial perspective. Deep down you know the inconceivable forces working together to maintain this enormous pattern which radiates sunshine on earth and together with water allows for the emergence of an infinity variety of living patterns, shapes, colors, sounds, aromas, fishes, birds, mammals, humans on Earth. Without that "burning ball of gas" none of that would be possible. I cannot believe for one moment that you stop at seeing a "burning ball", without experiencing a deeper emotional response of the size and scope of how the universe works....
Species and their unique patterns and colorations are representative of natural artistry of self-ordering biological mathematical functions. All this happens spontaneously, that's the beauty and artistry of it!
This is natural artistry in its purest sense. This is artistry physically expressed trough the blind application of relative values and mathematical functions. Science is the study of these processes. And your "burning ball of gas" has been explained "in depth" by science.
Are you content to call the universe as being "space with stuff" in it? I doubt that very much Michael.
But all these creative processes is not evidence of an intelligent motivated God. It is evidence of physical processes in accordance with the mathematical interactions of the relative atomic values of elementary particles.
There is nothing mysterious about mathematics. All orderly patterns are evidence of mathematical functions.
"addition, subtraction, multiplication, division" are the most fundamental simple mathematical functions and are employed in every universal action at every scale from atoms to galaxies.
The proof lies in the fact that
everything can be
quantified and
qualified, and that even the simplest biological organisms acquire a sense of time, a mathematical pattern.
Circadian rhythm
A
circadian rhythm is a natural, internal process that regulates the sleep-wake cycle and repeats roughly every 24 hours.
[1] It can refer to any biological process that displays an
endogenous,
entrainable oscillation of about 24 hours.
These 24-hour rhythms are driven by a circadian clock, and they have been widely observed in plants, animals, fungi, and cyanobacteria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm
Bacteria can count, slime molds can count, monkeys can count. They don't count 1, 2, 3, 4 ......, they posses a
natural innate sense of relative values (quantities), they can make a distinction between "more" from "less", a mathematical function.
This is pertinent to this OP, because all these orderly patterns are easily mistaken as being an expression of "intelligence" (a universal god).
A mistake which can be easily corrected by the prefix "
quasi-intelligent", i/e it behaves "as if" it is intelligent.
But it is merely mathematical. Tegmark estimates that the entire universe can be explained with 32 relative values and a dozen equations. Human mathematics are perfectly up to that task.
Therein lies the simple beauty of it all. The introduction of a sentient, loving , motivated God is just plain superfluous and makes the whole thing unneccessarily complicated....
