More wisdom from Neil deGrasse Tyson:
I am not in denial of good design. Good design is obvious when it’s there—the opposable thumb. Stereo-vision. Speech. Ball sockets (shoulders and hips). The shape and strength of our skull, to name a few. But you [theist] are in denial of bad design, not because it is not there, but because it falls outside of your religious philosophy, and are thus blind to it. By the way, you are not alone. This has been going on for centuries. And there is an entire field of religious philosophy called “apologetics” that carries on with this behavior. Its proponents are called “apologists.”
I am not in denial of good design. Good design is obvious when it’s there—the opposable thumb. Stereo-vision. Speech. Ball sockets (shoulders and hips). The shape and strength of our skull, to name a few. But you [theist] are in denial of bad design, not because it is not there, but because it falls outside of your religious philosophy, and are thus blind to it. By the way, you are not alone. This has been going on for centuries. And there is an entire field of religious philosophy called “apologetics” that carries on with this behavior. Its proponents are called “apologists.”
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
