Atheism vs. God's Existence

[Ravenshire]

Why would an omniscient, omnipotent designer be constrained by our current body shape? Can't your gawd figure out how to run two pipes without crossing them? Your average plumber can.

They aren't just pipes obviously. You've got muscles, nerves, bones, cartilage, and all sorts of other functions besides just letting air/food pass through. You want a pipe just for your lungs coming out of your face? You'll be spewing mucous out all day long. You couldn't speak. If you did move your larynx over, you couldn't articulate words. Your face would be longer and your neck would be wider. It couldn't just be using your nose for respiration and mouth for eating for many reasons. If that were the case, then the common cold would be fatal. Also, have you ever tried to run a few miles only breathing through your nose? How would you remove things from your nose? In other words, you do you make sure mucous gets out? With our current setup, if something gets in your nose, you can simply breathe in through your mouth, then push air (and the obstruction) out of your nose. You are oversimplifying the problem.

Flipper says hi.

[Ravenshire]

If the success rate of an omniscient, omnipotent designer less than 100% for something as simple as not causing deaths by crossing two pipes, it's either incompetent or malicious.

Let me get this straight: Because everything is not perfect, the designer is stupid or evil? My car wouldn't start the other day, but I don't think the designer was either of those two things.

The designer of your car isn't omniscient and omnipotent, dumbass. ID proposes just such a designer.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Not trying to be offensive, but it seems that AAA could do with some training in critical thinking.  This is the best one of which I know:





Boru

[AAA]

Well you cut out the part that we do understand. I was trying to show how impressive the system is, and that we are just scratching the surface, but you ignored all the parts that we do understand to try to make it sound like it was a God of the gaps argument. The point is that systems are tightly regulated and are amazing at what they do. Our bodies are not just "barely good enough to get by" as someone said they were before.

The problem is that we aren't just scratching the surface. We've discovered a tremendous amount of information about biology (and science in general), and so far, it's every bit as impressive as it is consistent with naturalism, and none of it has supported design.

This is why, when we're confronted with something that we don't understand yet, we don't feel inclined to reach for theism as an answer.

Stay on topic, we have just scratched the surface of epigenetics.

And that's just a complete assertion: "none of it has supported design". Just because you say it doesn't make it so. Molecular biology has revealed processes that we have only ever seen in one place; intelligently designed systems. It isn't based on what we don't know, it is based on what we do know.

[AAA]

Let me get this straight: Because everything is not perfect, the designer is stupid or evil? My car wouldn't start the other day, but I don't think the designer was either of those two things.

Really terrifically, amazingly bad analogy.  The team of people who designed your automobile are fallible human beings - design mistakes are common and to be expected, breakdowns are not the issue.

But suppose your design team put the engine on the roof, made the tires out of marzipan, and installed a windscreen that would shatter at 50kph.  You would look at any of these and immediately think, 'Bad design' and you'd be right.  But even if the car worked in some circumstances, (on a road that was softer than marzipan, or never being driven over 49kph), any reasonably intelligent human could come up with better design ideas.

If life was designed by a perfect Being, we should not be able to improve on.  But I (and I'm not remotely a biologist or an engineer) could design a better eye, better/safer birth processes, better resistance to diseases, and so on.  These are not the result of things breaking, but are flaws intrinsic to the 'design'.  Why would a perfect Being, able to create life, get it so arsy-versy?

Boru

I can't believe there is a single person on this planet who has the audacity to say that they could personally design life better than it is. Everything that has ever been observed in nature has been great at what it does, including the trachea/esophagus setup. I do not concede that life has aspects of poor design, it is clearly done well.

If the trachea/esophagus is such a problem, then why haven't the two tubes diverged into two separate ones through evolution? If evolution can't do that, then how on earth do you want me to believe it is responsible for the cellular features?

[Whateverist]

Another way to say it is that the 'design' that we see in living things shows evidence of their having been formed differently in the past.  Adaptions organisms make in transforming over time show design compromises based on expedience.  The giraffes crazy long nerve wouldn't have been designed like that if not for having evolved from an animal without an extremely long neck.  It is evidence of evolution.

AAA, are you arguing that evolution wasn't reflected in the organisms we find today?  Or are you just saying it is all God's plan/design ultimately?  If you agree that organisms have the capacity to evolve over time, I have no trouble with agreeing that, yeah, that's pretty cool how animals change to better fit their environment.  But does that require any designer?  If no designer is involved in the actual choices, why assume a designer had to design organisms to evolve sans and input from a designer?

The long nerve is consistent with evolution, but it is not inconsistent with design. Watch that video that someone posted of Dawkins watching an anatomist dissect a giraffe laryngeal nerve. You will see a branch coming off of the nerve every time they show a close up. Are we supposed to assume that those branches are unimportant? I'm glad that you didn't design my recurrent laryngeal nerve. It wouldn't have been able to reach several of its targets.

To answer your questions, there are aspects of biology that are consistent with both the theory of evolution and ID. Also, the basic story of mutation and natural selection sounds perfectly reasonable until you start to see what exactly it needs to explain. Elaborate control mechanisms involving literally dozens of different enzymes working together is one example. I think that if evolution wasn't the answer before the question was even properly asked, we would not have attribute the powers to mutation and natural selection that we have.

Right.  Agree to disagree then.

[AAA]

Let me get this straight: Because everything is not perfect, the designer is stupid or evil? My car wouldn't start the other day, but I don't think the designer was either of those two things.

The designer of your car isn't omniscient and omnipotent, dumbass. ID proposes just such a designer.

ID stops at designer, and does not attempt to identify the designer. That goes on to historical, philosophical, and other lines of inquiry other than observable science.

[IATIA]

I can't believe there is a single person on this planet who has the audacity to say that they could personally design life better than it is.

Me.

There are also eugenics engineers.

So i guess you are literally correct. There is not a 'single' person but rather a multitude of persons.

[rexbeccarox]

The designer of your car isn't omniscient and omnipotent, dumbass. ID proposes just such a designer.

ID stops at designer, and does not attempt to identify the designer. That goes on to historical, philosophical, and other lines of inquiry other than observable science.

How convenient.

So, are you ever going to give me any evidence that snowflakes are designed?

[Whateverist]

Really terrifically, amazingly bad analogy.  The team of people who designed your automobile are fallible human beings - design mistakes are common and to be expected, breakdowns are not the issue.

But suppose your design team put the engine on the roof, made the tires out of marzipan, and installed a windscreen that would shatter at 50kph.  You would look at any of these and immediately think, 'Bad design' and you'd be right.  But even if the car worked in some circumstances, (on a road that was softer than marzipan, or never being driven over 49kph), any reasonably intelligent human could come up with better design ideas.

If life was designed by a perfect Being, we should not be able to improve on.  But I (and I'm not remotely a biologist or an engineer) could design a better eye, better/safer birth processes, better resistance to diseases, and so on.  These are not the result of things breaking, but are flaws intrinsic to the 'design'.  Why would a perfect Being, able to create life, get it so arsy-versy?

Boru

I can't believe there is a single person on this planet who has the audacity to say that they could personally design life better than it is. Everything that has ever been observed in nature has been great at what it does, including the trachea/esophagus setup. I do not concede that life has aspects of poor design, it is clearly done well.

If the trachea/esophagus is such a problem, then why haven't the two tubes diverged into two separate ones through evolution? If evolution can't do that, then how on earth do you want me to believe it is responsible for the cellular features?

And now you're just being silly.  You obviously neither understand nor accept evolution.

I wonder if I may ask you a religious question.  Is the idea of "god" tied up with His creative function for you?  Or are you in it for the objective morals and/or afterlife plan?  Also, how can your ideas of what God is be so precise?