Then we need to backtrack to more foundational conversation. The problem is that the more foundational conversation is a long one. I'll just make references, though, assuming that you are educated and knowledgeable. We know that as far as "being" (the pondering of metaphysics), the basic philosophical question is why there is something rather than nothing. On top of that we have a dilemma of personality: humans are personal beings, supposedly from a mechanistic, impersonal source. Along with that we know from logic that no finite point has any meaning unless it has an infinite reference point (Jean-Paul Sartre). A third conundrum is epistemology: how do we know that we know what we know?

There are two directions we can go in: either there's no sense to any of it, and everything is meaningless, irrational, and absurd, or there is some kind of answer that is both rational and able to be communicated. There are only three possible directions:

1. Everything that exists has come out of absolutely nothing: no energy, no mass, no motion, no personality. Nothing Nothing. I don't think anyone believes this.

2. Everything that exists came out of something, but it was impersonal: just energy, chemicals, velocity, mass. If you accept that, then there's no explanation for personality. We're just necessarily impersonal—the result of impersonal matter plus impersonal time by impersonal chance. Nothing has any meaning, because meaning can only come from free agency, which is personal.

3. Everything that exists has a personal beginning. It makes perfect sense that personality came from personality, meaning from intent, and reason from reason.

The most sufficient answer to being, meaning, reason, and personality is a personal, meaningful, reasoning source. Now there is an infinite reference point to give meaning to the particulars. And if you disagree with this, you are claiming that personality came from the impersonal, meaning came from randomness, and reason arose out of nothing. Frankly, I find that much harder to make sense of. Even our scientific knowledge gets passed through the grid of reason, personal-ness, and meaning (purpose). But if we accept personality, meaning, and reasoning, now we also have a basis for epistemology (knowing). Otherwise, I can't even trust my own thoughts, because the process of natural selection knows nothing of and cares nothing for truth, but only survival.

Add on top of that that there are about 8 reasonable arguments for the existence of God that show that belief in such a being is a rational and logical practice, not at all out of sync with what we see in our world. One of them is that the universe displays some signs of design, which in our observations is always the effect of a purposeful designer.

On top of this I would add the great hopelessness and angst that is growing in our world, right alongside the rise of atheism. The heavy metal songs on the radio scream of purposelessness, hopelessness, fear, violence, and despair. Political corruption is rampant. It's hard for me to believe that the path of impersonality, chance, and irrationality make more sense to you than the possibility of theism, which has a lot of reason behind it.

My guess is that you used to believe in God, but somewhere along the way you became disillusioned, probably because God just didn't seem to be there. Life seemed too random and difficult, and you found God to be so unresponsive that he might as well not exist, and you walked away in complete disgust, and you stopped believing. Maybe there are logical flaws in scientific naturalism, and maybe you can't account for personality and reason, but now that makes more sense to you than a God who just doesn't seem to be there.

If there is no infinite reference point, no God, no spiritual realities, then we are all just machines, victims of happenstance, and there is no meaning, no purpose, and no possibly even no reason. And yet I think we all know that's not an accurate picture. No one can truly live out their lives on that foundation. What makes more sense is that you had skewed expectations about God and the life he offers, and when it didn't pan out according to your understandings and expectations, you turned away in disgust. The problem is that leaves you with an irrational alternative.

> Repent from your sins

I do.

> purify your heart

I don't know what this means. Does it mean anything?

> Humble yourself before the Lord

It is impossible to humble yourself before something you don't believe in. Catch-22.

> if this is just a defiant challenge to God where you are throwing down the gauntlet

It isn't. I can't defy something I don't believe in.

He's right here as well. How are you expecting to perceive him? With your EYES or EARS? God does want to have a personal relationship with you. James 4.8 says, "Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded." If you want to be warm, you must stand near the fire. If you expect to get wet, you have to get in the water. If you want a personal relationship with God, then you must come close to God with sincerity. Eternal life, peace, joy, salvation, and an open relationship aren't things that God hands out like some sort of prize at the carnival. As C.S. Lewis says, "They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry." Having a relationship with God involves two parties, not just one, and you have an important part to play in that relationship. You have to take responsibility for your part, and God will take responsibility for his.

The verse continues with some instruction as to how to do this. Repent from your sins, purify your heart. Humble yourself before the Lord (James 4.10). If you are really seeking God and want to know him, then do what is necessary to enter the relationship. But if this is just a defiant challenge to God where you are throwing down the gauntlet, no wonder you're not aware of him.

I don't feel like I have a conundrum. God as described by Christianity wants to have a personal relationship with me. Here I am. Where is He?

Thankfully truth is not dependent on what *you* see. We are all very well aware that sometimes our senses deceive us. A building looks square from a distance, but as you get closer you can tell it's round. Your eyes tricked you. Sometimes you think you hear someone behind you, but you turn and no one is there. While our senses can be very useful when it comes to gathering and analyzing information, ultimately they cannot be universally trusted. There are many other times, in addition, where we perceive something with our senses and yet don't understand what it is we are seeing, hearing, touching, or tasting, so senses don't necessarily also lead to comprehension. Another example that the fact that you don't see God anywhere doesn't mean the hypothesis fails. You are probably also aware of the phenomena where you see something several times, and only after repeated sightings do you have a eureka moment about what it was you were seeing. Do you remember those computer-generated 3-D pictures of a decade ago or so where you actually had to learn how to see it to even tell what it was? And once you learned how, a 3-D picture emerged out of colored geometric pattern, and now it made sense. The hypothesis that "knowing God involves the same kind of knowing that we already do" isn't even close to failing on your criteria.

On the other hand, truth doesn't make sense until it is engaged by the mind. Truth is always personal. It's something someone claims, or someone appropriates. All truth is somebody's truth. Even 2+2=4 involves a human agent.

But that leaves us with a conundrum. Since we can only perceive truth through personality, but since our senses have been known at times to deceive us, how can we know that what we know is so? We all learn to rely on certain clues that we consider to be reliable, and even some that we consider to be so substantial they are undeniable. At the end of the day, there are important parts of knowing that can’t be expressed in words.

Suppose you make a friend through the Internet. Let's suppose it's me. You never see me anywhere. You just see words on a page that represent my thoughts to you. Suppose we do this for 20 years, over hundreds of written interactions. Could you claim you "know" me? In a sense, yes, According to your criteria of sight evidence, no. Do you see the weakness of your reasoning?

> evidence for such things (as someone else's mental state, pain level, etc.) is impossible to have

Outcomes. It works. Hypothesis is successful on the available evidence.

> In addition, it turns out that knowing God involves the same kind of knowing that we already do

An omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God? I don't see Him anywhere. The hypothesis fails on the available evidence.

Without trying to be rude, I think you've missed the point. The point of the analogy was to affirm that day in and day out, billions of times a day for billions of people, we live fully convinced of perceptions and analyses without any solid evidence, because when it comes right down to, evidence for such things (as someone else's mental state, pain level, etc.) is impossible to have. But we function just fine living that way and assume that we have knowledge—and many times, rightly so (but still no evidence). My following point, then, was that intelligent design doesn't clearly point to the existence of God, but shows that belief in a God is just as rational as my belief in other minds. So they are perfectly comparable.

In addition, it turns out that knowing God involves the same kind of knowing that we already do; it's not fundamentally any different from knowing my mechanic or my roommate. We can discuss this more as you like (if you want), but you must know that even when it comes to knowing my mechanic or my roommate, formulating foolproof criteria for certainty and knowledge hasn't been successful. We learn to rely on learned clues to focus on coherent patterns, and discern them to be what we call reality. It turns out that the reasoning behind the existence of God, and the reasoning involved in knowing God, is exactly the same as our day-in and day-out lives, and how we know anything about other people (and anything in general, for that matter). If you wish to pursue this conversation, I'd be glad to.

Assuming and behaving as if other humans function in a similar way to ourselves is a valid way to go about things as, as much as anything, it works, day in and day out, billions of times a day for billions of people.

Assuming the existence of God does not work in that same way. It is not comparable.

All you have come upon is the reality that sometimes very very smart people disagree with each other when it comes to philosophical science. Your link acknowledges that the fine tuning argument is advocated by a half dozen brilliant people, and yet he proposes a rebuttal to their argument. So is it bias that motivates you to choose your author over the half a dozen others? The arguments by Swinburne and Plantinga are as worthy as the arguments by your link, so it's a matter of what the reader chooses to believe more than the actual strength of the arguments.

When it comes right down to it, the essence of the argument from design filters down to this: We know that we are not alone in the world because we know there are other people in it. We also believe that they have a mind that can reason, feel, remember, intuit, etc. Yet when it comes right down to it, I have absolutely no concrete evidence of what is going on in anyone else's mind. I can never really tell if they think, what they are truly feeling, if their pain is real and what it is like, etc., and yet I suppose it's true. I can never determine by observation that someone else is in a particular mental state. I was being fitted for glasses not long ago, and the doctor had to keep asking me what I was seeing. No matter how fancy his equipment is, he can never truly know what it is that I see.

I can construct a sound inductive argument for the conclusion that I am not the only being that thinks and reasons, has sensations and feelings—an argument whose premises state certain facts about my own mental life and about physical objects around me (including human bodies), but do not entail the existence of minds or mental states that are not my own. This analogy is as good an answer as we have to the question "Do we know, and how do we know, the thoughts and feelings of others?" When it comes right down to it, other minds are inaccessible to me, and their attributes (like pain or sight) are similarly inaccessible. I have no observational proof of them. And yet we live life fully convinced that there are other people, that they have thoughts and feelings, and that our perceptions and analyses of such things are both reasonable and to varying extents accurate. We generally accept what people say at face value. If they say they went for a walk yesterday, we assume some truth and infer by attitude that he did indeed go for a walk. Humans can remember past actions and learn language.

This argument is like the teleological argument for the existence of God, though nothing is lock-tight. I cannot perceive someone else's mental state of pain, nor can I determine by observation that someone is in pain, and yet I nevertheless have or can easily acquire evidence that some other person is in pain and that some person is feeling pain in a bodily area in which I feel nothing. Concrete scientific evidences ultimately fail. With so many variables, what the analogy holds here is that for any person there are direct arguments for the propositions in question, and given that there is no comparable evidence against them, they must be more probable than not on his total evidence. The bulk of my commonsense beliefs about minds and mental states must be more probable than not on my total evidence. I have evidence that other sentient beings exist, but that's not enough to confirm that they experience anger, joy, depression, and pain, as well as hold beliefs. It's neither necessary nor possible that I am able to observe such entities to be able to assume truth.

So is the belief in God rational (which is what the argument from design claims)? The atheist has no argument to substantiate their own position. The teleological answer is strong, though not air-tight, but far more satisfactory than anything an atheist has ever offered. Given that there are no completely provable positions, we must conclude that a person may rationally hold a contingent, corrigible belief in the existence of a deity even if there is no answer to the relevant epistemological question. The strongest version of the teleological arg:

1. We don’t know of anything that shows purposeful design that wasn’t purposefully designed. Whenever we know of something that exhibits purpose (a reason for why it exists or why something happened the way it did), and whenever we know whether it not it was the product of intelligent design (somebody thought it up and made it happen), it was indeed the designed product of an intelligent being. Whether a watch, a washer, or a window, if we can infer that there was a purpose behind it, it’s safe to say that an intelligent being designed it for that purpose, or at least for a purpose.

2. There are many parts of the universe, the earth, and life as we know it that exhibit purpose—not just parts of the universe exhibit purpose, though, but the universe itself.

3. Therefore, it's logical to assume that the universe may probably be the product of intelligent design. Everything else we know that exhibits those characteristics was indeed designed; why should the universe be treated any differently?

If my belief in other minds is rational, so is my belief in God. The argument from design is a sound one, though others may give sound refutations and arguments as well. Each person has to examine the evidence and make their own decisions, but pursued to their logical conclusions, the rationality of a designer is not less likely than no designer. Even in that article it said that 99.9999999 percent of the universe was hostile to life. Odd that our little speck is well-suited to it. That all by itself calls for the question, "How did that happen?" One oasis in the middle of an endless desert calls for more explanation than, "Gee, that was lucky."

If an all-powerful being wished to create a universe with intelligent life in it He could do so any way he damn well pleased—atoms could be made of popcorn and planets from dirty underpants and there would still be intelligent life if He so decreed it.

Fine tuning arguments say nothing about an intelligent designer, I'd say, if you pursue them to their logical conclusion they actually make one less likely (http://atheism.wikia.com/wiki/Fine_Tuning_Argument).