You pre-suppose that all things have a purpose. Who is the designer and maker of a snowflake, and what is the snowflakes purpose? Each is unique, and each is beautiful. Does God create each one, from your point of view?
No, I don't pre-suppose that "all things" have a purpose. I believe that all things are designed and made for a reason and sometimes that reason is that God is an artist.
I have a book on snowflakes. It blows me away.....a bit like microscopic creatures and the absolute perfection of them, even though they are not visible to the naked eye.
Or seeing the colors in a galaxy that need Hubble to appreciate. They look like nothing from earth, but O the beauty of them when revealed from space!
Indeed not. But I have experience with house-building. I have seen houses built, I have been involved in renovating and upkeeping them. I would apply my understanding of those to the one standing in front of me, and via comparison draw a conclusion.
I have come from a home renovating background myself. My husband was a builder and an excellent carpenter. We ran a home handyman business for a while until illness forced him to retire.
The part I struggle with is to extend your analogy. If I came across 100 houses, and of those 6 of them were incomplete, damaged, non-functional or otherwise far less than perfect, what would your assumption be?
For this, you need to understand how imperfection was spread to humankind genetically from the DNA of our first parents. Initially, there were no defects in humankind.
It was with the sentence of death that a separation from their Creator occurred and some kind of genetic degeneration took place. (How the death sentence was imparted to man, the Bible doesn't say) This deterioration in human genetics compounded over time resulting in a greatly reduced lifespan and a gene pool today that is little more than a cess pool. Imperfection produces defective offspring, sadly, some more defective than others. Man's mismanagement of the planet and his manipulation of the elements, as well as his atomic and chemical weaponry has also been instrumental in causing further genetic problems. Add to that the devil's influence over man and beast, and who knows what was unleashed on the world?
I used the analogy of the house because many of the things I referenced were not organic, and therefore not subject to evolutionary explanations. Evolution cannot place the earth where it is nor can it explain the size and shape or the angle of the axis. It cannot explain the right mixture of gases nor indeed how life began. Since science can only prove that life comes from pre-existing life, I find it amazing that they can ignore such an important part of the argument and bicker about how life changed over time. If they can't tell us how life began, what is the point?
To illustrate my point of view, I'll use a very simplistic analogy. It's just for example sake, not a scientific treatise, but hopefully it gives the idea of what I think
If there are a billion planets, and we assume that the conditions for life are literally a one in a billion chance, then (on average) on that one planet there could be sentient beings sitting there assuming there MUST be a Creator, since the odds of them existing were one in a billion. And on every single other one of the planets, there is no-one to think anything. Yet with a billion planets, and a one in a billion chance of life per planet, there are pretty good odds of life existing somewhere. For the same reason, without the least amount of evidence, I would (if pressed) lean towards some form of life existing somewhere else. I'd assume you wouldn't?
Well, to me logic dictates that God had to start somewhere. We already know that the earth is relatively young, universally speaking. Science knows that the universe had a beginning otherwise substances (such as uranium) found on our planet would not still be in the same state.
With giving life to other beings who are intelligent, God went further and gave them free will. That really had the potential to muck things up, if they chose to misuse it.
For aeons, angelic beings inhabited the spirit realm, which the Bible indicates existed before the creation of the material universe. So God had spirit beings in the intangible realm like himself at first and then graduated at some point to the creation of material things. He is infinite and creative so he is obviously impelled to create but in his own timeframe.
There is no mention of rebellion or discord in the spirit realm until the creation of man. Satan's appearance in Eden is no surprise since the Bible indicates that he was a Cherub (a high ranking angel) in the Garden of Eden. He was 'Johnny on the spot' observing the man's response to the introduction of his wife and the relationship that developed between them. He targeted the woman and deceived her into disobedience by lying to her about the outcome. He knew he could get to the man through the woman....and the rest as they say, is history. The Bible says it was through the man that sin entered into the world, not the woman. Things would never be the same again.
They lost so much that day....their relationship with their Creator, their human perfection, their paradise home and a future for their children. Whatever defect they were afflicted with, was all they could pass on to all future generations. From knowing no evil, they had a murderer in the camp within just one generation. Such is the power of sin.
God's question to satan concerning Job seems to indicate that this same malicious spirit had a problem with Job's faithfulness and was perhaps scheming to undo this righteous man. He made assertions and challenges concerning Job and God allowed a testing that would have undone most other humans. He is a beacon in my life.
I believe that the issue of God's sovereignty over his creatures had to be settled once and for all before he could proceed with spreading life throughout the universe, otherwise our miserable experience could happen all over again. This way, God gets to solve the problem, establish his sovereign rule over all, deal with the rebels and set precedents for all eternity. Brilliant, if you ask me.
Because I can take you to an assembly line for computers tomorrow. I can disassemble them, and explain the manufacture and composition of each component.
Could any of the components be missing and still produce a working computer? Is there room for the components themselves to have popped up without design and manufacture? Even if you had the many components that were all required to make the computer operate, how would a computer come out of the end of that assembly line without the hands to assemble them? If you put the components in the wrong order or in the wrong place, how can the computer work?
What use would the computer be if there was no power source? A Computer without power is dead, useless, just like a human without breath.
Science would have us believe in a string of fortunate accidents just kept on happening.....
How much co-incidence can there be before one starts to feel uncomfortable about it?
Creation does not make me uncomfortable at all. I can give credit where credit is due to a master designer and builder.
Because they are stamped with serial numbers allowing me to track their exact date of manufacture. Because I can review the exact purpose to which computers were originally designed. And a hundred other reasons besides.
Honestly, my original question still stands. Have you read anything independently on the Watchmaker analogy? There is a large amount of material, both theist and non-theist in nature. The arguments are by no means as simple as they sound, and even pro-Watchmaker arguments may be informative for you.
Most people do not understand how a computer works. I know I don't.
They only care "that" it works and get grumpy when it doesn't.
None of them will take the computer apart and even see the stamped serial numbers unless something goes wrong and they need a technician.
Medical science is only barely scratching the surface in understanding the most complex computer in existence....the human brain. And yet many will proclaim that it required no designer or maker....it was just the product of that series of fortunate accidents....
I cannot fathom that mentality. It wouldn't matter what I read, design requires a designer. Exquisite design, requires a genius. I know you think I need rescuing, but I am in full control of my faculties.
The universe screams loudly about its Creator, as do we.
Bit pressed for time (fixing a pool while the weather holds) so I'll have to respond to the rest later!!
No worries. We are in for a hot summer by the looks, so that sounds like a good idea.....
Anywayyy, so you figure these scientists got this prebiotic soup exactly right? That they couldn't have made the slightest mistake somewhere along the line, which resulted in this "50-50 distribution" you speak of? Of course because when it's convenient to have scientists be correct then that's what they are, and when it's not convenient they aren't. 