The Watchmaker: my fav argument

[Mister Agenda]

This is precisely the type of thinking that makes religious ideas so dangerous. it excuses any amount of evil perpetrated in life because the dead people 'may have a better life now'.

Seriously, if child cancer is NOT an evil in your mind, then you need to re-evaluate your whole morality. ANYTHING said as an excuse for it only undermines your moral system and shows it to be vacuous.

I am pointing out that we simply don't have complete information, and thus cannot assert stuff like "a deity who allowed this is incompetent".

And also can't reasonably assert competence on the part of a being who arranged things the way they are.

---

[...]

So it's worth noting that Christianity views emptiness as intentional. God doesn't just fill the Earth to the brim, he makes a garden and places two people in it. The rest of the planet, and perhaps the Solar System, is our canvass to paint, our ground to till, our problem to solve.

There used to be a quote going around among the anti-religion people, about how the earth couldn't be designed because so much of it is ocean. The argument, I guess, is that because people can't live on water then the ocean is wasted space. 

When was this and what was the source of the quote?