How can we reconcile the argument of intelligent design with supposed design flaws?

[Charlemagne_III]

It’s amazing how people pull together in disasters though. Truly, the best and worst of human nature comes out in disasters.

The best of human nature is when people live their lives in virtue and humility, aware that life is fragile and that an earthquake could hit any moment.

Or as Pascal put it, we should always live and be prepared for death as if we only had eight hours left to live. In such a circumstance, with heaven in the offing, how can death be anything but a blessing and not the curse atheists think God (if he exists) would press upon us.

 

[openmind77]

In Judaism, we believe the universe was intentionally created imperfectly so that we (mankind) can work to fix it in partnership with G-d. It is up to us to take up the challenge.

Do you mean that God deliberately planned, designed and created the Zika virus and also designed and created the mosquito to spread it, in order that mankind could get together to eliminate it?

Or is the imperfect design at a higher level and the virus and mosquito were never planned but just created by chance?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Do you mean that God deliberately planned, designed and created the Zika virus and also designed and created the mosquito to spread it, in order that mankind could get together to eliminate it?

Or is the imperfect design at a higher level and the virus and mosquito were never planned but just created by chance?

It does keep coming back to the same point, doesn’t it?

God, if he exists, has to have designed a perfect world.

The world is imperfect. Therefore there is no God.

Or did God create an imperfect world that we might be perfected in it?

“Be ye perfect, even as your heavenly father is perfect.” Mathew 5:48

 

[tonyrey]

Do you mean that God deliberately planned, designed and created the Zika virus and also designed and created the mosquito to spread it, in order that mankind could get together to eliminate it?

Or is the imperfect design at a higher level and the virus and mosquito were never planned but just created by chance?

Design does not imply that everything is designed. There is clearly an element of chance in the outcome of events. To infer that everything is ultimately the result of blind, purposeless activity is going to the other extreme. There is a framework of order and design within which accidents and anomalies occur. Without competition at the microscopic level there could not be successful development. It is easy to criticise but to create an entire universe with so much beauty, variety, enjoyment and fulfilment is a far more difficult proposition - a fact demonstrated by the sceptics’ failure to provide a feasible blueprint of a superior biosphere.

 

[John_Martin]

Do you mean that God deliberately planned, designed and created the Zika virus and also designed and created the mosquito to spread it, in order that mankind could get together to eliminate it?

Or is the imperfect design at a higher level and the virus and mosquito were never planned but just created by chance?

God designed all, including the zika virus and mosquitos and us, each to live out, to actualize, our design in our movement within the world.
We are doing that and the virus is doing the movements of its design.

What’s the problem? If we are doing the doings of Charity in the world and the virus is doing its ordered doings per its design, then the design is in order. This is not a design of a material perpetual motion machine (a never dying material life form). Our material being is for acting out what we are, for extending what we are to others, then letting it go. It is a vehicle for acting out Charity. It is not the meaning of our life.

Blaming another, blaming God, for a “poor design” simply means you have a different design in mind than the engineer’s intention for the design. The correct question for God is not “Why did you do a faulty design?” but the question is rather, “Tell me what you designed, what is your goal, tell me who You are.”

 

[Bradski]

Design does not imply that everything is designed. There is clearly an element of chance in the outcome of events…

Of course there is, Tony. God designs some things and other things just appear by chance. Let’s take some things at random and you can tell us…God or Chance!

Leukaemia
Puppies
Zica virus
Sunsets
AIDS
Snowflakes
Adam Sandler
Raspberries
Botflies
Whiskers on kittens
Bottulism
Helen Mirren

I could go on. But I think you get the idea.

 

[Aloysium]

Imagine a pair of dice.
If we consider the numbers to represent the world as we sense it.
And, the dice to be its underlying structure (the laws of nature).
God creates the dice and rolls them.
He can direct the outcome by placing them as He chooses, or play the game and let them roll as they will by chance.
This would be how the simplest forms of material being are manifest.

There are different levels of creation, including that of atoms, molecules and their electrochemical interactions, another that sees the existence of the simplest forms of life, to the most complex, we ourselves.

Although we have instinctive emotional reactions and innate abilities, we choose what we do.
Through those choices, we become the person we will ourselves to be.
Some of us become hardened and closed with very little possibility of giving love. When an opportunity arises, it is dismissed by doubt or perhaps taken advantage of in self-interest.
Sometimes we are more open; it is received with great joy and abandon. But, the roots may be shallow, so that when more is asked and it becomes more difficult to give, the person gives in. The world’s rewards such as money, prestige, sex, power and the worries that accompany their loss can lure a person away from acting in a loving fashion. It takes a certain amount of effort to create the fertile ground for love to grow and prosper. They are not random happenings. As God said to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” It is our choice what we do with the graces He bestows on us.

Random vs designed is a rather confused way of trying to understand what all this is about.

 

[inocente]

The first living organism did not appear in stages, but appeared all at once … irreducibly complex.

The complexity of the first living organism was therefore intelligently designed.

Design does not imply that everything is designed.

God designed all, including the zika virus and mosquitos and us, each to live out, to actualize, our design in our movement within the world.

You design fans don’t appear to agree on what is designed. Could you each please say exactly what you think is and isn’t designed, including whether you think design includes some or all species, and some or all organs, and whether the features you think are designed appeared all at once or developed gradually over time.

 

[CHRISTINE77]

Do you mean that God deliberately planned, designed and created the Zika virus and also designed and created the mosquito to spread it, in order that mankind could get together to eliminate it?

Or is the imperfect design at a higher level and the virus and mosquito were never planned but just created by chance?

If it’s there, God made it. I agree with the poster that said God made the world with flaws.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

You design fans don’t appear to agree on what is designed. Could you each please say exactly what you think is and isn’t designed, including whether you think design includes some or all species, and some or all organs, and whether the features you think are designed appeared all at once or developed gradually over time.

Why don’t you try answering your own question?

 

[inocente]

Why don’t you try answering your own question?

For me God isn’t a designer, nothing is designed.

But the forum guidelines say “Don’t answer a question with a question. If you don’t know the answer, say so”. So don’t be coy, what’s your answer?

 

[tonyrey]

Of course there is, Tony. God designs some things and other things just appear by chance. Let’s take some things at random and you can tell us…God or Chance!

Leukaemia
Puppies
Zica virus
Sunsets
AIDS
Snowflakes
Adam Sandler
Raspberries
Botflies
Whiskers on kittens
Bottulism
Helen Mirren

I could go on. But I think you get the idea.

God designed the entire universe with its natural laws as a foundation for the development, enjoyment and fulfilment of living beings, in addition to which He has created persons who have the power of reason, free will and the capacity for love. Within the framework of Design there is an element of Chance which causes physical evil like disease, disasters, deformities, accidents and premature deaths but they do not alter the fundamental value, purpose and beauty of life for the vast majority of creatures on this planet.

Moral evil also causes unnecessary misery, suffering and death but it is a lesser evil than not creating the human race because tit occurs within the context of cosmic justice prefigured in the Indian doctrine of Karma and the Greek concept of Nemesis culminating in the Christian Beatitudes and Woes. In other words we all ultimately get what we deserve - expressed in the popular expression:" What goes around, comes around…"

 

[Charlemagne_III]

For me God isn’t a designer, nothing is designed.

But the forum guidelines say “Don’t answer a question with a question. If you don’t know the answer, say so”. So don’t be coy, what’s your answer?

My answer is that God designed and created the whole shebang.

If you don’t believe that, go read Genesis in your Baptist Bible. I assume it reads the same as the Catholic Bible since Protestants still use the Bible Catholic bishops put together.

The only alternative is for you to say that God intended that his Creation would be a gamble, that it might not produce anything like us at all because the chances that it would were so remote. Yet he knew that it would because he designed it so that it could. And it did!

So do you think that God created the universe without designing it?

 

[inocente]

My answer is that God designed and created the whole shebang.

If you don’t believe that, go read Genesis in your Baptist Bible. I assume it reads the same as the Catholic Bible since Protestants still use the Bible Catholic bishops put together.

The only alternative is for you to say that God intended that his Creation would be a gamble, that it might not produce anything like us at all because the chances that it would were so remote. Yet he knew that it would because he designed it so that it could. And it did!

So do you think God is still designing? For example, is the zika virus God’s design?

 

[openmind77]

Design does not imply that everything is designed. There is clearly an element of chance in the outcome of events. To infer that everything is ultimately the result of blind, purposeless activity is going to the other extreme. There is a framework of order and design within which accidents and anomalies occur. Without competition at the microscopic level there could not be successful development. It is easy to criticise but to create an entire universe with so much beauty, variety, enjoyment and fulfilment is a far more difficult proposition - a fact demonstrated by the sceptics’ failure to provide a feasible blueprint of a superior biosphere.

So what is by design and what is by chance (or an accident/anomaly)?

Are good things like a beautiful butterfly by design and a virus carrying mosquito by chance?

Or are all small things by chance and big things (like mammals) by design?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

So do you think God is still designing? For example, is the zika virus God’s design?

So you don’t like to answer questions? Just ask them?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

So what is by design and what is by chance (or an accident/anomaly)?

Are good things like a beautiful butterfly by design and a virus carrying mosquito by chance?

Or are all small things by chance and big things (like mammals) by design?

In your opinion are all things by chance?

Is your post above by chance or by design?

 

[tonyrey]

For me God isn’t a designer, nothing is designed.

But the forum guidelines say “Don’t answer a question with a question. If you don’t know the answer, say so”. So don’t be coy, what’s your answer?

The simple answer is that Design does not imply the total absence of flaws.

 

[fred_conty]

So do you think God is still designing? For example, is the zika virus God’s design?

I don’t think we can say that God sat down one evening, and by candle light, took out his pen and deliberately designed this particular mosquitoe and said “Ah, there at last I’ve got them.”

I think what we can say is that we were removed out of Paradise and were warned that our work and life would be stressful and by the sweat of our brow. And now this mosquitoe is one of the works we have to do by eliminating him. God never forbade us to work hard and make our life better. He just said it would be hard.

 

[meltzerboy]

Of course there is, Tony. God designs some things and other things just appear by chance. Let’s take some things at random and you can tell us…God or Chance!

Leukaemia
Puppies
Zica virus
Sunsets
AIDS
Snowflakes
Adam Sandler
Raspberries
Botflies
Whiskers on kittens
Bottulism
Helen Mirren

I could go on. But I think you get the idea.

Adam Sandler definitely by chance, but Helen Mirren by design.