Often, in order to justify their belief in God’s existence, people will argue that the Universe is too “complex” to have come about by chance alone, so God must have done it. Not only is this argument flawed because it does nothing to show that God exists (God being the Christian god), it is also flawed because it requires ignoring the current condition of humans and it requires ignoring human history.
First of all, if we look at humanity’s present condition, we’ll find that there are many problems humans face today that they’ve faced for many thousands of years, such as disease. If God or even something god-like that created us existed, it’s unimaginable how it could be stupid enough to create beings that could suffer so much from things like disease, especially if humans themselves are able to cure many of those diseases. Considering this is God we are talking about, you would think he would be able to create intelligent life that doesn’t suffer from disease, in particular those diseases that cause horrendous amounts of suffering (e.g., smallpox). The most likely explanation for this would be that God had intended for humans to suffer or simply that God doesn’t exist. As Christians (well, most of them) believe God to be some sort of omnibenevolent entity that loves everyone, that’s a bit of a dilemma. Besides disease, there are many other flaws in humans that are completely unacceptable for life created by a deity. Flaws in our “design” from mental disorders—which were once attributed to “demonic possession” by Catholics because they weren’t aware of the possible natural causes at the time—to flaws such as sometimes choking on the very things that keep us alive (food), help to illustrate the fact that these organisms that, supposedly, must have been designed by God are flawed in ways that are completely unnecessary and reek of incompetence on God’s part, if not ill intent.
As I just noted, people used to attribute mental disorders to “demonic possession” and some still do, which only goes to show the resilience of beliefs involving supernatural phenomena to evidence-based explanations. This is both the case with belief in demonic possession and belief in God’s existence. Humans all over the world have developed beliefs about a god of some sort, and many people have believed in multiple gods or goddesses too. This belief stems from an inability to explain how humans, Earth, and the rest of the Universe came into existence. However, just as is the case with demonic possession, now that we do have evidence-based explanations, the belief still persists as a result of people’s unwillingness to fully accept new facts and change their beliefs accordingly. People continue to assert that the world is too complex to have come about without God, and they persist in believing in all sorts of other baseless nonsense. However, if one takes into consideration that there are an innumerable number of flaws in this “great” design of God’s and the fact that when this belief came about people had no other way to explain their existence other than with what seemed obvious at the time—and still seems obvious to many now—it becomes apparent that Christianity is no different than the many other theistic religions of the world—at least in this respect—and is merely an outdated belief system.
Hi Alex,
I saw your comments over on Pharyngula and that I’d come over and see what you had to say. It seems to me that you really haven’t addressed the issue of complexity. Instead you have argued that the existance of suffering and imperfection rules out the possibilty of God. It only rules out what you expected God to be.
Let me analyze your argument from an engineering perspective, since I am one. I drive a Prius which is a fairly state-of-the-art car. I am sure that hundreds of engineers contribited to its design. Yet if my car gets scratched it is incapable of self repair. Should I conclude that those engineers don’t exist because engineers would be smart if they did exist and they wouldn’t design a car that can’t even self repair a scratch?
If you or I get scratched we self repair. From an engineering perspecive that’s pretty impressive.
Hi Randy! Thanks for the criticism, I really appreciate it.
The intent of this post was to show that because there are numerous flaws in our “design” that any deity should easily be able to prevent, especially the Abrahamic god, design by a deity is unlikely. I wasn’t attempting to rule out the possibility of any intelligent designer.
I honestly don’t know enough to argue one way or the other about whether something designed humans; that’s far too technical for me. I do lean towards the view that we were not designed because while we are complex, scientists have continued to gain a better understanding of how we came about without a designer. For example, 1000 years ago, before we had all of the scientific knowledge we do now, people assumed God designed us because there didn’t appear to be any other possible way all these people could have just come into existence (aside from another god creating them). The same goes for today with intelligent design, except there are many biologists who can explain why a designer is unnecessary. However, even if that was not the case, it would still be presumptive to say that there is an intelligent designer who designed us just because we’re complex.