The Watchmaker: my fav argument

[The Grand Nudger]

It's more the difference between nature and artifice, I think. Not all designs are useful. In fact, the majority of designs, even useful designs, turn out to be insufficient or un-useful in one way or another, even with respect to their natural functional analogs.

My irrigation system is less functional and less useful than simply owning a river would be (if anyone is holding, and would sell, and the water stays around 55f- hit me up, lol) - but we can see, even so, that polyvinyl chloride structures are not naturally occurring. If we were aliens visiting this planet the day after everyone got raptured up by the christer god (he was feeling more magnanimous that day than any of his followers ever have) - we wouldn't need to see any humans to know that what we were looking at was some novel thing - different from the rest...even though, at that point - there would be no utility to the structures whatsoever, by any measure.

My irrigation system is noticeably intentional, noticeably designed....but may be well or poorly designed, more or less or not useful at all.... depending on a frame of reference. None of us have use for a late nl hand axe, and not all late nl hand axes are/were well constructed or equally useful, many, we think, were discarded failures........but this doesn't prevent us from recognizing that they were designed.

Even when we look at some natural thing (or, if we prefer, a thing very strongly believed to be natural), we can still point to the effects of artifice. Bones are not designed, but whatever left tool marks in those bones was. Coming up with some explanation for how those marks made it into those bones some other way stretches npot only our credibility, but goes beyond everything we know about anything and becomes an empty position which can be held by nothing -other- than faith. So, we say, here is a bone that a tool has been applied to and left characteristic marks of artifice. Here, i some non natural thing.

If the god botherers could find something like that, they'd have an argument, but they can't - and they never intended to do so anyway. Their assertion of some design™ is an a priori commitment to a religious belief - not an observation - not even a thing which depends on the truth of their superstitions.

...and, deliciously, none of this matters at any rate, as another poster already very clearly laid out, because no design or plan would or could ever engender a rational belief in some silly goddamned god - because gods - as conceived by god our believers- don't need plans or designs to accomplish things. Christer god didn't sit down with a protractor and come up with the earth. He spoke it into existence. That's not a plan, that's not a design, that's raw fucking power.