ID vs the end of the world

[Wertbag]

The common argument from Christians is that we should see the designer in our world and universe because "He's obvious".  I've heard a few different commentators pointing out just how bad our world and universe is, with the vast majority of both our planet and the universe being hostile to life.  You add in events like the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs, potentially another that wiped out the animals from the ice age and the images we see from space of entire galaxies being annihilated and really have to think "this is His plan?"

 

Ways life may be exterminated:

- Our sun is burning through its fuel and thereby losing mass.  Once its mass gets too low it will no longer hold its shape and will expand to engulf the whole solar system.

- Apparently we are on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy.  The two will hit with the mass of the stars pulling all planets into annihilation.

- One hypothesis says the universe will continue expanding until entropy reduces the universe to a grey dead space.  Another says the expansion will reverse pulling all matter into a big crunch.

- God did a great job of hiding billions of tons of oil and coal underground and didn't let anyone know that it would be a really bad idea to burn it all while cutting down the forests.  We may not know the speed of climate change but we are certainly doing our best to pollute ourselves to devastation.

- There are diseases which are antibiotic resistant, others which are lethal and the fast evolving flu which is very contagious.  If the next evolution gives the flu lethality and our drugs stop working then we could face another black death or Spanish flu.

- Enough suicide bombers/religious nut jobs/end of the world cults that if they could get their hands on nuclear weapons they wouldn't hesitate to blow us to hell.

- The ice ages our planet has been through are on a cycle and eventually we could have a return of the glacial period which would bury half the planet.

 

Not seeing a great deal of intelligent design going on here!   

[sdelsolray]

Why is life so important?  Why aren't the consistency of the laws of physics and chemistry (which are the underlying causes of many (arguably all) of the items on your list) more important?  Without that consistency how would carbon-based life emerge, evolve and develop consciousness in the first place?

 

As to the common theist's 'My Creator God is obvious...just look" claim, that's an equally common recipe.  Mix religious indoctrination, pattern recognition errors, wishful thinking, a pound of argument from incredulity, three pounds of willful ignorance, a healthy dose of lack of curiosity and sprinkle with one dozen different logical fallacies (your choice of which ones) and let the mixture sit in the human brain for a few decades.

[Ellinas]

So, the creator is obvious.

 

Well, if we accept for a moment that such a creator may be out there, perhaps these Christians should see the cruelty and egocentric nature of the creator as characterised by them, because it's a damn site more obvious than whether he exists in the first place.

[FreeAtLast]

Obvious creator?

Not even close.

- 99.99% of the universe is completely uninhabitable - in fact the conditions would kill us instantly. The amounts of radiation, high temperatures, and a host of other factors make it nearly impossible for us to exist anywhere else.

- As you already pointed out, it's all going to end in one giant, pointless, chaotic oblivion.

- Genetic diseases are often caused by genetic copying errors. Autoimmune diseases eat us from the inside out. Who would design a system that can and does kill itself?

- I think Neil Tyson pointed this out, but what kind of designer would have waste management and reproduction come from the same area? Seems like a counter intuitive, dangerous, and easy medium to spread disease.

- We eat, drink, and breathe out of the same hole, guaranteeing that some percentage of us will choke to death....etc, etc.

 

The list goes on and on!

It seems highly unlikely that our universe was designed by any intelligent force who cares for humanity. Its much more probable that what we interpret as design is actually the result of natural selection and evolution.

[♦ Fuego ♦]

Paul was big on the "obvious from nature" line. But this was after a lifetime of daily indoctrination as a Pharisee. So he appeals to nature to say "Doesn't nature itself teach you that a man should not have long hair?" Let's see, with lions, the males have long hair, and the females have short hair. With chimps, they are pretty equal. With gorillas, the males have somewhat longer hair. Slugs, clams, trees, rivers, birds, rocks, all no hair at all. So, no, nature doesn't teach that at all. "But if you want to be contentious, we have no other practice, nor do the churches of God."  Ah, so "harumph-harumph do what I tell you and repeat my nature claim even though it doesn't make sense at all, harumph. You there, I didn't get a harumph out of you. You watch your ass."

 

"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows forth his handiwork." How so? Because they are pretty and were beyond the understanding of primitive cultures that thought they were little lights stuck in a "firmament" dome over the Earth? That is why they thought ascending above the clouds was impressive, since you'd obviously go right into Heaven. And stars could break off and guide wise men to a house instead of incinerating the planet in a blaze of nuclear heat. And God could stop the Earth's spin (though the primitives saw it as stopping the sun moving across the sky) so Joshua could finish his battle with daylight. Then there was this tower they wanted to build to reach Heaven...

 

So confirmation bias echoes back to us the choices we already made because it feels good. But it is not reason or logic.

[Tsathoggua9]

 

Obvious creator?

Not even close.

- 99.99% of the universe is completely uninhabitable - in fact the conditions would kill us instantly. The amounts of radiation, high temperatures, and a host of other factors make it nearly impossible for us to exist anywhere else.

- As you already pointed out, it's all going to end in one giant, pointless, chaotic oblivion.

- Genetic diseases are often caused by genetic copying errors. Autoimmune diseases eat us from the inside out. Who would design a system that can and does kill itself?

- I think Neil Tyson pointed this out, but what kind of designer would have waste management and reproduction come from the same area? Seems like a counter intuitive, dangerous, and easy medium to spread disease.

- We eat, drink, and breathe out of the same hole, guaranteeing that some percentage of us will choke to death....etc, etc.

 

The list goes on and on!

It seems highly unlikely that our universe was designed by any intelligent force who cares for humanity. Its much more probable that what we interpret as design is actually the result of natural selection and evolution.

 

That Neil Tyson quote -- I have thought along the same line for as long as I can remember! Sloppy design, I'ma tellin' ya....

[FreeAtLast]

 

 

That Neil Tyson quote -- I have thought along the same line for as long as I can remember! Sloppy design, I'ma tellin' ya....

Yeah I found it here: