CHALLENGING DESIGN
To explain [something] by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer - Richard Dawkins
For example, imagine astronauts discover wrecked machinery on the moon that didn't come from earth. Is it just random space debris or the remains of an alien spaceship? If we conclude it is in fact a crashed spaceship, it will be because the wreckage shows sign of design (widows, doors, control panels, rockets). We can conclude that there are aliens who designed this spaceship. We don't have to explain where these aliens come from, what planet they live on or even what they look like. If we conclude, "Aliens designed this spaceship", we don't have to answer the question, "Who designed the aliens?"
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Don't go in the crashed alien spaceship
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Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily
Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate
A god who is capable of sending intelligible signals to millions of people simultaneously, and of receiving messages from all of them simultaneously, cannot be, whatever else he might be, simple - Richard DAwkins
God is the same as his essence - Thomas Aquinas
What Aquinas means is that most creatures and objects possess characteristics. For example, I possess the characteristic of "being a human" and tomatoes possess the characteristic of "being red" and "being round". You can break creatures and objects down into the characteristics they possess, which is why they are complex.
Tomatoes are red and round and they're fruits but you don't put them in fruit salads. Because the essence of tomatoes (what tomatoes have to be like) is separate from the characteristics of tomatoes, you can imagine a blue tomato or a square tomato. You could even try to grow one. God isn't like that. God isn't composed of different things or parts. His essence (what he's really like) is identical with his characteristics. God doesn't just possess lovingness, God is Love. God is Omnipotence and Omniscience and Goodness. You can't consider one of God's attributes separately from the others or imagine what God would be like without one of them, the way you can imagine a blue tomato. Or a square one. This is summed up in the expression that God is "ontologically simple" - he has a simple sort of existence because he only has one characteristic: "being God". This is known as the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity (DDS) or "aseity". |
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God is a very elegant, economical and fruitful explanation for the existence of the universe - Keith Ward
God may be almighty, all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving, but the one thing He cannot be, if He’s even minimally to meet His job description, is “all-simple” - Richard Dawkins
- We would have to wonder why an intelligent designer placed the neural wiring of the retina on the side facing the incoming light… This arrangement… produces a blind spot at the point where the wiring is pulled through the light-sensitive retina to produce the optic nerve that carries visual images to the brain - Ken Miller
Other examples of poor design in the human body might include:
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Stephen Fry points out "bone cancer in children" as an example of dysteleology
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I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent god would have designedly created the ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice - Charles Darwin
J.S. Mill comes to similar conclusions, arguing that nature is 'guilty' of many crimes. He suggests that if a human was responsible for such suffering among other humans or animals, we would feel it right to punish them for it. Mill admits there is goodness in nature, but thinks it is far outweighed by the amount of suffering.
He comes to this conclusion: Either there is no God or there exists an incompetent or immoral God - J.S. Mill |
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