Why 'life Had To Have Been Designed' Is A Terrible Justification For God's Existence

[Mriana]

Why 'Life Had To Have Been Designed' Is a Terrible Justification for God's Existence

 

Granted, this probably should go in the "Science and Religion" section, but I want to generate conversation and what better place than here in the Lion's Den?

 

This is the most common justification people have for why god exists. To those people, I say: You really need to study evolution a little more carefully.

 

I must agree. Those who make such a justification have not actually studied science.

 

The theory of evolution is completely sufficient to explain the complexity and diversity and exquisite high functioning of biological life. That's exactly what it does. The whole point of evolutionary theory is that it explains exactly how life came to be the complex and amazingly balanced web of interconnections that it is, with species beautifully adapted to their environments -- not through design, but through natural selection and descent with modification. It explains it beautifully, and elegantly, and with no need for any supernatural designer to explain anything.

 

Descent with modification; the survival and reproduction of life forms that are best able to survive and reproduce; great heaping gobs of time.

 

And in fact, biological life is an excellent argument against God or a designer.

 

Why? Because so much of this supposed "design" of life is so ridiculously piss-poor.

 

Yes, there are many aspects of biological life that astonish with their elegance and function. But there are many other aspects of biological life that astonish with their clumsiness, half-assedness, inefficiency, "fixed that for you" jury-rigs, pointless superfluities, glaring omissions, laughable failures and appalling, mind-numbing brutality. (Here's a very entertaining short list.) I mean...sinuses? Blind spots? External testicles? Backs and knees and feet shoddily warped into service for bipedal animals? (She said bitterly, getting up to do her physical therapy on her bad knee.) Human birth canals barely wide enough to let the baby's skull pass...and human babies born essentially premature because if they stayed in utero any longer they'd kill their mothers coming out? (Which sometimes they do anyway.) A vagus nerve that travels from the neck down through the chest only to land back up in the neck...traveling 10 to 15 feet in the case of giraffes? Digger wasps laying their eggs in the living bodies of caterpillars...and stinging said caterpillars to paralyze but not kill them, so the caterpillars die a slow death and can nourish the wasps' larvae with their living bodies? The process of evolution itself...which has brutal, painful, violent death woven into its every fiber?

 

You're really saying that all of this was designed, on purpose, by an all-powerful God who loves us?

 

Evolution looks at all this epic fail, and explains it neatly and thoroughly. In the theory of evolution, living things don't have to be perfectly or elegantly "designed" to flourish. All that matters is that they be functional enough to survive and reproduce, and to do so more effectively than their competitors. In fact, in the theory of evolution, not only is there no expectation that the "designs" be perfect or elegant -- there is every expectation that they wouldn't be, since every new generation has to be a minor adaptation on the previous one, and there's no way to wipe the slate clean and start over. And the comfort or happiness of living things matters not in the slightest bit to the process of evolution...unless it somehow enhances the ability of that living thing to survive and reproduce.

 

The argument from design looks at all this epic fail, and answers, "Ummm... mysterious ways?"

 

once you know about evolution -- not just about Darwin, but about the rich and thorough, broad-ranging and finely detailed understanding of life that evolution has blossomed into in the 150 years since On The Origin of Species -- the argument from design collapses like a house of cards in a hurricane.

 

The argument from design explains nothing that evolution can't explain better. It has massive, gaping holes. It has no predictive power whatsoever. And it has not a single scrap of positive evidence supporting it: not one piece of evidence suggesting the intervention of a designer at any point in the process. All it has to support it is the human brain's tendency to see intention and design even where none exist, leading to the vague feeling on the part of believers that life had to have been designed because...well...because it just looks that way.

 

And if "it just looks that way" is the only argument you can make for why life was designed, you're going to have to find a better argument.

 

Well, let's see if the Xians can find a better argument. Personally, I haven't heard a better one from Xians who believe in design, yet.

[par4dcourse]

Great article Mriana. The duckbill platypus jump-started my daughter into free thinking.

[laurie]

external testicles do serve a purpose. the temperature at which sperm must be formed and stored is quite specific. if the testes were kept inside the abdomen, the sperm would all overheat and die. also, the scrotum's ability to raise and lower the testes nearer and farther from the warm body allows the sperm to thrive in varying environments, hence the shrinking when it's cold.

This has no pertinence to evolution/design, It just caught my eye.

[Shyone]

external testicles do serve a purpose. the temperature at which sperm must be formed and stored is quite specific. if the testes were kept inside the abdomen, the sperm would all overheat and die. also, the scrotum's ability to raise and lower the testes nearer and farther from the warm body allows the sperm to thrive in varying environments, hence the shrinking when it's cold.

This has no pertinence to evolution/design, It just caught my eye.

Right on.

 

I mean, very true.

[agnosticator]

external testicles do serve a purpose. the temperature at which sperm must be formed and stored is quite specific. if the testes were kept inside the abdomen, the sperm would all overheat and die. also, the scrotum's ability to raise and lower the testes nearer and farther from the warm body allows the sperm to thrive in varying environments, hence the shrinking when it's cold.

This has no pertinence to evolution/design, It just caught my eye.

 

If only this was posted in the sex section, I would have many crude and vulgar things to say. By the way, why did that catch your eye?

[laurie]

because, i knew about it. there is a sex section?

[Ouroboros]

external testicles do serve a purpose. the temperature at which sperm must be formed and stored is quite specific. if the testes were kept inside the abdomen, the sperm would all overheat and die. also, the scrotum's ability to raise and lower the testes nearer and farther from the warm body allows the sperm to thrive in varying environments, hence the shrinking when it's cold.

The Evolutionary History of Testicular Externalization PDF

[Sconnor]

external testicles do serve a purpose. the temperature at which sperm must be formed and stored is quite specific. if the testes were kept inside the abdomen, the sperm would all overheat and die. also, the scrotum's ability to raise and lower the testes nearer and farther from the warm body allows the sperm to thrive in varying environments, hence the shrinking when it's cold.

This has no pertinence to evolution/design, It just caught my eye.

 

Other mammals have internal testicles.

 

Why couldn't the CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE design a functioning internal scrotum for human males?

 

I guess the guy upstairs invested in athletic cups -- he made a killing............

 

--S.

[Sconnor]

Yes, there are many aspects of biological life that astonish with their elegance and function. But there are many other aspects of biological life that astonish with their clumsiness, half-assedness, inefficiency, "fixed that for you" jury-rigs, pointless superfluities, glaring omissions, laughable failures and appalling, mind-numbing brutality. (Here's a very entertaining short list.) I mean...sinuses? Blind spots? External testicles? Backs and knees and feet shoddily warped into service for bipedal animals? (She said bitterly, getting up to do her physical therapy on her bad knee.) Human birth canals barely wide enough to let the baby's skull pass...and human babies born essentially premature because if they stayed in utero any longer they'd kill their mothers coming out? (Which sometimes they do anyway.) A vagus nerve that travels from the neck down through the chest only to land back up in the neck...traveling 10 to 15 feet in the case of giraffes? Digger wasps laying their eggs in the living bodies of caterpillars...and stinging said caterpillars to paralyze but not kill them, so the caterpillars die a slow death and can nourish the wasps' larvae with their living bodies? The process of evolution itself...which has brutal, painful, violent death woven into its every fiber?

 

What about those perfectly designed, hurricanes, tornadoes, typhoons, heat waves, volcanoes, lightening strikes, blizzards, mudslides, etc, that cause so much destruction, leaving monstrous injuries, misery and death in their wake?

 

What about the awesome design of the umbilical cord? God sure screwed up that design. If god could create the universe, why couldn't he design an umbilical cord that wouldn't wrap around a babies neck, depriving them from oxygen, causing thousands of babies a year to die or to suffer the rest of their life with egregious mental and physical challenges?

 

How about god's great design of putting the air hole right next to the food hole causing thousands to choke to death every year? What about the these perfect designs: viruses, bacterias, and germs, that have caused billions to suffer and die in mass plagues? These are shitty fucking designs.

 

One of my personal favs, comes from Neil deGrasse Tyson, who rightly, observes this grand designer, in the sky, put a pleasure zone next to a sewage plant.

 

Here's my partial list of the poorly designed world.

 

Alzheimer's

Cancer

Cataracts

Deformity

Appendix

Pituitary glands that cause morbid obesity

Back pain and chronic injury

Knee pain and chronic injury

Poor eyesight

SIDS

Toenails

Male nipples

Conjoined twins

Poisonous fruits and vegetables

Babies born with their heart on the outside of their chest

Babies being born to die

Cancer from the sun

Ecoli

Temporary presence of a tail in a fetus

Blind eyes on a subterranean animal

Bird flu

Flightless birds

Leukemia

 

What about becoming extinct at any moment? Asteroids? Gamma rays?

440 million years ago. End of the Ordovician period.

370 million years ago. Near the end of the Devonian period.

245 million years ago. End of Permian.

210 million years ago. End of Triassic.

65 million years ago. End of Cretaceous.

 

And christians still think an intelligent creator-god has us in mind?!?

 

What else was so impressively designed by the great designer in the sky?

 

--S.

[Franko47]

...and a special thanks for never mentioning in the entire Bible that most diseases and ailments are caused by microscopic bugs; not ghosts, spirits, or because of our "sins".

 

Nice one. Again, not one thing in scripture that is knowledge outside of or beyond the ignorant savages that wrote it in the first place. Not one thing.

 

Lots of advice on killing people, stoning women, and slaughtering little kids, though. Just nothing really helpful.

 

A False God is exactly that. A God that cannot impart any facts or knowledge beyond that of the idiots making it all up as they go along.

[Shyone]

...and a special thanks for never mentioning in the entire Bible that most diseases and ailments are caused by microscopic bugs; not ghosts, spirits, or because of our "sins".

 

Nice one. Again, not one thing in scripture that is knowledge outside of or beyond the ignorant savages that wrote it in the first place. Not one thing.

 

Lots of advice on killing people, stoning women, and slaughtering little kids, though. Just nothing really helpful.

 

A False God is exactly that. A God that cannot impart any facts or knowledge beyond that of the idiots making it all up as they go along.

This is where YEC and the like step up to the plate and say that Genesis is a science book. It's amazing the claims that have been made. I mean laughably amazing!

 

Universe by Design

Written for the upper-level student through the well-read layman, this book explores the universe, explaining its origins and discussing the historical development of cosmology from a creationist viewpoint.

 

They use the terms of modern science and tie them to specific verses in the bible. They can talk about Planck time in Genesis 1:3 and dinosaur extinction in Genesis 7:22.

 

"It's all there!" they exclaim. Perhaps, in a few years, they may even find evolution in there.

[Vigile]

external testicles do serve a purpose. the temperature at which sperm must be formed and stored is quite specific. if the testes were kept inside the abdomen, the sperm would all overheat and die. also, the scrotum's ability to raise and lower the testes nearer and farther from the warm body allows the sperm to thrive in varying environments, hence the shrinking when it's cold.

This has no pertinence to evolution/design, It just caught my eye.

Right on.

 

I mean, very true.

 

Most outcomes of evolution also serve a purpose. I think the point is that it's all ad hoc 'design' and that were there truly an intelligent designer things would have been better thought through. Couldn't their be a better way to keep sperm cool? Couldn't sperm be designed to be heat resistant? Etc...

[Shyone]

external testicles do serve a purpose. the temperature at which sperm must be formed and stored is quite specific. if the testes were kept inside the abdomen, the sperm would all overheat and die. also, the scrotum's ability to raise and lower the testes nearer and farther from the warm body allows the sperm to thrive in varying environments, hence the shrinking when it's cold.

This has no pertinence to evolution/design, It just caught my eye.

Right on.

 

I mean, very true.

 

Most outcomes of evolution also serve a purpose. I think the point is that it's all ad hoc 'design' and that were there truly an intelligent designer things would have been better thought through. Couldn't their be a better way to keep sperm cool? Couldn't sperm be designed to be heat resistant? Etc...

That doesn't come out until Human 2.0.

 

In the meantime, there's a patch.