Atheism vs. God's Existence

[Gemini]

That part of our physiology is consistent with evolution, but it is by no means inconsistent with design.

...there are so many different responses that we haven't even begun to understand the molecular mechanism by which our bodies deal with a changing environment...

I'm honestly puzzled by a creationist doctrine in which structures consistent with non-teleological explanations are simultaneously consistent with teleological explanations. Shouldn't we just throw teleological arguments out the window, if this is the case?

As for molecular mechanisms that we don't understand, see Bonhoeffer. Try to locate god in what we know.

[AAA]

Another way to say it is that the 'design' that we see in living things shows evidence of their having been formed differently in the past.  Adaptions organisms make in transforming over time show design compromises based on expedience.  The giraffes crazy long nerve wouldn't have been designed like that if not for having evolved from an animal without an extremely long neck.  It is evidence of evolution.

AAA, are you arguing that evolution wasn't reflected in the organisms we find today?  Or are you just saying it is all God's plan/design ultimately?  If you agree that organisms have the capacity to evolve over time, I have no trouble with agreeing that, yeah, that's pretty cool how animals change to better fit their environment.  But does that require any designer?  If no designer is involved in the actual choices, why assume a designer had to design organisms to evolve sans and input from a designer?

The long nerve is consistent with evolution, but it is not inconsistent with design. Watch that video that someone posted of Dawkins watching an anatomist dissect a giraffe laryngeal nerve. You will see a branch coming off of the nerve every time they show a close up. Are we supposed to assume that those branches are unimportant? I'm glad that you didn't design my recurrent laryngeal nerve. It wouldn't have been able to reach several of its targets.

To answer your questions, there are aspects of biology that are consistent with both the theory of evolution and ID. Also, the basic story of mutation and natural selection sounds perfectly reasonable until you start to see what exactly it needs to explain. Elaborate control mechanisms involving literally dozens of different enzymes working together is one example. I think that if evolution wasn't the answer before the question was even properly asked, we would not have attribute the powers to mutation and natural selection that we have.

[AAA]

What I want to see is triple-fail continuing to assert divine design when he reaches middle age - assuming they are male - and needs to take a piss but can't, because his enlarged prostate has blocked his ability to do so.

Just because your prostate is swollen doesn't mean mine will be or that it was intended to be that way. I'll use the analogy again; if I break your laptop with a bat, does that make it poorly designed? No, because it wasn't intended to face that type of stress.

[IATIA]

And another poor design. FREEZE BRAIN.

[AAA]

But where would you put them??

Why would an omniscient, omnipotent designer be constrained by our current body shape? Can't your gawd figure out how to run two pipes without crossing them? Your average plumber can.

They aren't just pipes obviously. You've got muscles, nerves, bones, cartilage, and all sorts of other functions besides just letting air/food pass through. You want a pipe just for your lungs coming out of your face? You'll be spewing mucous out all day long. You couldn't speak. If you did move your larynx over, you couldn't articulate words. Your face would be longer and your neck would be wider. It couldn't just be using your nose for respiration and mouth for eating for many reasons. If that were the case, then the common cold would be fatal. Also, have you ever tried to run a few miles only breathing through your nose? How would you remove things from your nose? In other words, you do you make sure mucous gets out? With our current setup, if something gets in your nose, you can simply breathe in through your mouth, then push air (and the obstruction) out of your nose. You are oversimplifying the problem.

[AAA]

That part of our physiology is consistent with evolution, but it is by no means inconsistent with design.

...there are so many different responses that we haven't even begun to understand the molecular mechanism by which our bodies deal with a changing environment...

I'm honestly puzzled by a creationist doctrine in which structures consistent with non-teleological explanations are simultaneously consistent with teleological explanations. Shouldn't we just throw teleological arguments out the window, if this is the case?

As for molecular mechanisms that we don't understand, see Bonhoeffer. Try to locate god in what we know.

You don't see how aspects of a system can be both consistent with evolution and design? I admit that some features are consistent with both ID and evolution, but there are other features that I would argue are definitely inconsistent with evolution. It isn't where the competing views agree that we figure out which one is better, it is where they disagree.

Well you cut out the part that we do understand. I was trying to show how impressive the system is, and that we are just scratching the surface, but you ignored all the parts that we do understand to try to make it sound like it was a God of the gaps argument. The point is that systems are tightly regulated and are amazing at what they do. Our bodies are not just "barely good enough to get by" as someone said they were before.

[AAA]

Think about the success rate of eating. I don't even feel like I can speculate a reasonable ratio of successful attempts at eating to the attempts that end in choking. Just be thankful we've got mechanisms to prevent choking.

If the success rate of an omniscient, omnipotent designer less than 100% for something as simple as not causing deaths by crossing two pipes, it's either incompetent or malicious.

Let me get this straight: Because everything is not perfect, the designer is stupid or evil? My car wouldn't start the other day, but I don't think the designer was either of those two things.

[Mister Agenda]

I wouldn't put it anywhere since my creation wouldn't need to eat or breathe in order to not die.

You're talking like God has restrictions to work around. Where did these come from?

I knew you would rather have a discussion of theology than biology. You always want to move toward that route. Again, it is illogical to say that just because life obeys contraints it is not designed. Moreover, just because life is not the way you would like it to be does not mean that it wasn't designed. You don't know what is the optimal anatomy for living systems.None of us do.

I'm not trying to be offensive, but this is the only analogy I can think of to illustrate the problem with the way you guys are thinking. You are basically saying, "why can't life just not need to breathe or eat? Life would be so much better." It's like a child saying "Why can't we print $100,000,000,000 for everybody? Life would be so much better for everyone." The obvious flaw is that you have to have some foresight before you make a statement like that.

You are correct. It just means that if life was designed, the designer was neither omniscient nor omnipotent; or alternatively, he/she/it/they wanted it to look like they weren't Omni-anything.

[Gemini]

Well you cut out the part that we do understand. I was trying to show how impressive the system is, and that we are just scratching the surface, but you ignored all the parts that we do understand to try to make it sound like it was a God of the gaps argument. The point is that systems are tightly regulated and are amazing at what they do. Our bodies are not just "barely good enough to get by" as someone said they were before.

The problem is that we aren't just scratching the surface. We've discovered a tremendous amount of information about biology (and science in general), and so far, it's every bit as impressive as it is consistent with naturalism, and none of it has supported design.

This is why, when we're confronted with something that we don't understand yet, we don't feel inclined to reach for theism as an answer.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Let me get this straight: Because everything is not perfect, the designer is stupid or evil? My car wouldn't start the other day, but I don't think the designer was either of those two things.

Really terrifically, amazingly bad analogy. The team of people who designed your automobile are fallible human beings - design mistakes are common and to be expected, breakdowns are not the issue.

But suppose your design team put the engine on the roof, made the tires out of marzipan, and installed a windscreen that would shatter at 50kph. You would look at any of these and immediately think, 'Bad design' and you'd be right. But even if the car worked in some circumstances, (on a road that was softer than marzipan, or never being driven over 49kph), any reasonably intelligent human could come up with better design ideas.

If life was designed by a perfect Being, we should not be able to improve on. But I (and I'm not remotely a biologist or an engineer) could design a better eye, better/safer birth processes, better resistance to diseases, and so on. These are not the result of things breaking, but are flaws intrinsic to the 'design'. Why would a perfect Being, able to create life, get it so arsy-versy?

Boru