The Watchmaker: my fav argument

[Angrboda]

Would the oceans be more useful to man if he had gills?

We would be able to live in them without as much tech, I guess.

I rather find it amusing that John was suggesting the empty inaccessible spaces were ours to explore and exploit, 

It's common for people these days to fantasize about space exploration. I'm not really for it, myself.

and you, supposedly agreeing with him, argued that the emptiness of the oceans was to prevent us exploring and exploiting them.

No, I never said that. Please don't make up shit that I didn't say. 

It is clear that, lacking gills, we can't comfortably live in the oceans as we do in the open air. But I never said we were "prevented from exploring or exploiting them." We obviously have done that. In fact we've exploited them too much. If the oceans die we die too. 

Man has found his gills, despite not being furnished with them.

Yes, it appears that Bierce was wrong about this. Counter to what he says, the presence of so much ocean is not a reason to think that the earth wasn't designed with people in mind, or that it is a poor design for people. 

This is a good example of the narrow-mindedness of people who pass judgment and say that "if God had really designed things, he would have done it the way I would have." Bierce couldn't conceive of the benefits of having the oceans the way they are.

Edited to add:

You're continuing to add to your post after I'd already replied. Here is part of what you added:

Christian theology, the story of God's chosen, is about how we are not just a side-show in God's plan, but center stage!

You may be confusing me with someone else, because I have never argued for a human-centered view of the world. In fact I argued against "Apollo"'s view because I consider it too human-centered.

Funny how in all those words you managed to skip over the part about you not having made a valid argument about Apollo's point, aside from that you can't know what you don't know, but if that's the case, and not knowing what one doesn't know is narrow-minded, then what are we to say of the people who, in their narrow-mindedness argue that the evidence does indeed point to design by God? If it's stupid to judge design unlikely because one doesn't know what one doesn't know, it's equally stupid for both sides. But you seem to think the one is stupid and the other is not. I don't think either Bierce or Apollo was arguing that the oceans and the universe couldn't have unknown uses, only that the appearance is that they do not. Bierce, writing at the turn of the 19th century was justified in his conclusions, and Apollo speaking today appears justified in his conclusions. Maybe that's being narrow-minded, but if so, then you too are narrow-minded because you make statements all the time which might ultimately prove wrong but which seemed reasonable to you at the time.