Who's the most prominent Christian on this forum?

[The Grand Nudger]

What's between a light-sensitive portion of flesh and a cornea, iris, pupil, lens, viterous humor, sclera, optic nerve and retina all working together? Give me an example of one of those parts functioning alone. If you change just one to a more primitive state, you must change them all. The slightest difference makes the organism blind. I'll put it this way: we have cornea 10.0, pupil 10.0, lens 10.0, sclera 10.0 and retina 10.0. Make just one of those 9.0 and all have to mutate into 9.0 sometime before the organism dies. The same goes for the dozens of parts I didn't mention. Don't reach into the far evolutionary past in an attempt to confuse your audience. Describe to me an eye one stage away.

The eye is the most well documented and well demonstrated organ in any stage of evolution in any creature alive or dead. Every stage of the eye still exists -to this very day- so stop barking up a fucking tree.

Life in the whole universe is better suited to reproduce using a low-atomic element with 4 valence electrons, like Carbon. It bonds better. Water is the perfect solvent for a body because it turns from solid to liquid to gas in the shortest range of temperatures. Ignoring the existence of earth, C and H2O are our best chance. Now bring earth into the equation. It matches the already ideal life form to perfection.

-Our- best chance is not equivalent to -lifes- best chance. Given the elements we have available to us here it's no wonder that life on this rock is carbon based. Elsewhere it may not be. Your argument here is the puddle and the hole.

You might be tempted to invoke another universe. But we're discussing fine-tuning within our universe, not in the imaginary billions of hypothetical universes.

Anthropic principle.

Our materials fitting with our scientific laws in the most efficient reproductive way.
age to the species? Maybe we should abolish all jobs like doctors and surgeons because their duties are clearly against the species...

What else would you expect our laws to be based upon..some other materials?

What does innovation have to do with truth? The question is whether seeking the truth of our existence helps our existence.

It may not, which handily answers the question "Why does religion exist at all?"

At the end of the day, the job should get done better. Every retained mutation (such as altruism) has to improve our species’ chance of survival or it would be extinct by now.

Negatron, any given mutation can persist so long as it is not directly deleterious. Case in point, creatures don't seem to evolve to handle obstacles placed before them, they seem to have already posessed the mutation that allows them to out-compete -when- said obstacle is placed in front of them.

Richard Dawkins came up with two reasons for apparently altruistic actions. One is the gene theory. If you have my genes (a family member), I will look after you.

A theory very well demonstrated with the example of precisely who gets the extra honeycombs in any given gaggle of monkeys.

The other is reciprocal. If I think you'll respond in kind, I will do something nice. But neither explains the two examples I gave. The old lady on the bus neither has my genes nor is likely to do anything nice back.

Behaviours, once formed, are often not limited to the environment in which they were nurtured.

The children in 3rd-world countries couldn't be farther from my genes, and I will probably never see them again. Even if I did, they could never fully repay me.

How much have you given them relative to your immediate family and friends?

Or how about C.S. Lewis' famous example. A man is drowning in a river. You jump in and save him OR feel tremendously guilty for not jumping in. But if you're a man you probably will. You risk your life to save his.

You may, or you may stand there like a dumbass waiting for emergency responders while he drowns. Happens all the time.

It doesn't matter if you believe he'll give you a hundred dollars for your efforts. Nothing can account for your total ignorance of the point of your life--survival.

Wait...wait...you're going to jump in the water to save a drowning man if you can't swim? Doubt it.

If you think we gauge moral actions on survival alone, the evidence suggests otherwise.

Except that it doesn't.

Our conscious is with us all the time.

Quite the handy survival tool, "conscience"

Murdering anybody will stay in our mind for years, even if it ends up helping our survival.

No, it will stay in yours, others today and throughout history seem to have had no such trouble

Adultery produces guilt, even when a child comes out of it.

Except when it doesn't, as evidenced by the vast dearth of serial adulterers.....

Guilt makes no distinctions in favor of survival. A moral misfire would imply that morality is faulted at its root, in the guilt area. Examine your thoughts, not your actions. You consider it more decent to be like Mother Teresa than Charlie Sheen, am I correct?

You're incorrect. I think Charlie Sheen is a fantastic human being..Mother Theresa...not so much.

That is your conscience talking.

See the above.

Your conscience (morality) respects altruism and despises selfishness. If you acted on it more, you would be 'misfiring' all the time.

Except that it doesn't, and it isn't, but nice try.