Why did god design us so badly?

[edward_george]

A group of scientists finally reached a breakthrough–they discovered a way they could create humans out of dirt, just the way God did. The scientists went to the top of a hill to tell God what they were capable of doing. “God,” one of them shouted, “we just wanted to let you know that we don’t need you anymore, because we can create man out of the dust just like you did.” A booming voice returned from the heavens, saying “Oh, really? Well, show me what you’ve got.” The scientists turned and began to dig into the top of the hill. “Ah, not so fast,” God said. “Use your own dirt.”

/humor

In all seriousness, if you think you can do better, create man yourself. Use your own materials, ones that you created out of nothing. Tell us how it goes.

Another bit of edification for you, this one a true story.

St. Augustine was walking by the seashore one day trying to comprehend the mystery of the Trinity. He came upon a boy digging in the sand, and the boy was using a small shell to put seawater into a hole. Augustine asked the boy “What are you doing?” The boy responded “I’m emptying the sea into this hole.” Augustine then understood that he’d never be able to comprehend the infinite mystery that is the nature of God.

-ACEGC

 

[crowonsnow]

St. Augustine was walking by the seashore one day trying to comprehend the mystery of the Trinity. He came upon a boy digging in the sand, and the boy was using a small shell to put seawater into a hole. Augustine asked the boy “What are you doing?” The boy responded “I’m emptying the sea into this hole.” Augustine then understood that he’d never be able to comprehend the infinite mystery that is the nature of God.

-ACEGC

Or maybe he’d just forgotten or perhaps never knew what it was like to be a happy kid.

 

[revelations]

I’m a graduating Mechanical Engineering student, 4.5 years spent at University. I’ve built cars, designed and build my own ultra lite brake discs, designed a folding bicycle for Ferrari, worked in a variety of industries, taken classes up to calculus 7, and right now i’m taking a course about compressible fluid mechanics (rocket science!).

Last semester I took a course in bio-mechanics from an engineering perspective. Let me tell you, the human body is complex enough. There is nothing like hearing someone with 3 PhD’s stand at the front of a classroom and say things like:

“this is perfectly designed, the body naturally knows”
“we’ve thrown 2 million dollars at this and we still ahve no clue how it works”

Let’s look at some examples:

Bones: bones are an intelligently organized structure of molecules that make up the ideal composite material. The most advanced technology today can only HOPE to reproduce what our bones do. They are many times stronger than any metals we can produce. They adapt to changes in loading conditions.

Cartilage: every machine needs to be lubricated. Cartilage goes in between two different bones so that they don’t grind down. This stuff doesn’t grow back, if you tear it, it’s permanent damage. It lasts for 80 years, when it starts to deteriorate. Everyday, it gets stretched to 2-300 % of it’s original length, and it STRECTHES BACK PERFECTLY. Try doing that for 80 years with some quality elastics…

Heart/Circulatory system: The heart can pump 6 liters of blood per minute. That’s 3 2L coke bottles. The muscles around the heart are perfectly adapted and designed for their function. Hundreds of layers of differently oriented muscle tissue give the heart it’s contractile power. Your heart pumps about 70 times every minute. The best pump we as humans can make to replace the heart pumps about 3 to 4 L per minute, and wears out after two to three weeks.

And that’s just the mechanical systems. The biological mechanisms that keep us clean are even more mind boggling.

I would say , PRAISE GOD! Not “look at this junk i am”

-revelations

ps God made us the way he wants, and SIN makes us sick, not his ‘flawed’ design

 

[redhen]

I think it would be hard to defend a position of purposeful design in the human body. Science clearly shows that homo sapiens has evolved and is continuing to evolve. Some superfluous organs are still around though.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_vestigiality

If homo sapiens was intelligently designed, why the vestigal organs?

Some like random genetic mutations and natural selection to me.

 

[crowonsnow]

And that’s just the mechanical systems. The biological mechanisms that keep us clean are even more mind boggling.

Are you talking about our immune systems? That’s pretty much the smoking gun when it comes to demonstrating that humans are not intelligently designed. If you’re designing a car that never stops why would you give it brakes?

What purpose was there in a designer designing our bodies to fight off disease and cleanse themselves if our bodies and the rest of its creation were perfect? This is akin to Adam and Eve finding a clothesline and clothespins while hanging around Eden.

Or perhaps the assertion is that our immune and “cleansing” systems are part of an update to the prototype made necessary by an alleged “fall.” Well if that’s the case, then all the self repair mechanisms you mention came along after this “fall” as well. Before a “fall” they clearly weren’t needed.

Congrats on that degree BTW.

 

[seekerz]

Oh please our livers and kidney’s fail so easily, a flaw in our genetic replication creates cancer, exposure to to much UV causes skin cancer…

Do you have any idea of the abuse our bodies take before any inkling of something wrong occurs?

Kidneys and livers do not easily fail. Actually the liver has an amazing capacity to regenerate itself. Most only fail after serious infections or long years of heavy drinking although poisons/drugs can have more immediate effect.

Most cancer develops in the late decades of life, after our bodies have served us well for years. True, some cancers occur in the young, but they are by and large the exception rather than the rule. The factors giving rise to genetic causes of cancer are generally not known but again can be environmental.

If you’ve studied any aspect of the human body and it’s functions, you’d be amazed at how precisely everything is designed to work and even more amazed that this myriad of functions and interacting organs are able to work in such exact and intricate harmony for so many years.

The human body is a miracle much of which still eludes human understanding after years of poking, prodding and studying.

I think you have it backward: it’s not the body’s design that’s flawed, but the abuses and environmental effects which it’s subjected to that are imperfect (to put it mildly) and made more so each day by man’s action or inaction.

 

[crowonsnow]

The human body is a miracle …

Billions of which fail to thrive or survive. So what do you think human bodies were designed to do? Exactly what was the designer’s purpose?

Cars, for example, were designed by people to transport people.

What exactly did a designer design our bodies to do, before or after any alleged “fall?”

Our bodies were designed by a designer to __________.

Please fill in the above blank and then maybe we can see how well the design is working.

 

[revelations]

Ok, God the designer designed the human bodies. He also designed the world. And the trees. And alllllllllllllll the animals.

AND all the diseases. God is the creator of all, so those diseases that ravage us do so because they were DESIGNED to take advantage of our flaws. God didn’t come along and find the earth, and then grab his lincon log set and start putting us together. He made the whole system.

Thanks for the congrats, 8 more weeks to go!

 

[seekerz]

Billions of which fail to thrive or survive. So what do you think human bodies were designed to do? Exactly what was the designer’s purpose?

Cars, for example, were designed by people to transport people.

What exactly did a designer design our bodies to do, before or after any alleged “fall?”

Our bodies were designed by a designer to __________.

Please fill in the above blank and then maybe we can see how well the design is working.

“Billions of which fail to thrive or survive.” Please explain whether you are referring to illness or miscarriage, then I can better respond.

What were created for? That part is easy. Human beings (each consisting of a body and an immortal soul), were created to know and love God and to be happy with Him forever.

In a sense I guess you could say our bodies are given to us to interact with the environment and each other. When sin attacked the soul, the body became subject to disease.

This does not in any way diminish the fact that each of our bodies is a unique, beautiful work of art. Anyone (atheist or not) who doesn’t know that, hasn’t taken a good, hard look at himself or herself lately or just has lost the ability to appreciate true (as oppposed to worldly) beauty; both of which conditions are truly sad.

 

[crowonsnow]

Human beings (each consisting of a body and an immortal soul), were created to know and love God and to be happy with Him forever.

In a sense I guess you could say our bodies are given to us to interact with the environment and each other. When sin attacked the soul, the body became subject to disease.

That’s what I’m asking. I’m asking where exactly does sin come from if all we have going at the time are perfect bodies, perfect souls and a perfect designer? Which one produced “sin? “ Which one produced the “fall?” Understand?

Sin had to come from one of them, which would mean there never was an original perfection, nor an original perfect design.

 

[PapaSquash]

I think that we are drifting off topic, but the fall was due to our having being given free will by the creator. If it were impossible for us to choose to reject God we would not be truly free.

The fall was due to our being designed as human and not as robots.

 

[Woodstock]

I don’t care how old you are. I don’t care what great designs you can sketch out. When you can take nothing and work it into the interconnected grandeur that is humanity and all of creation, throwing in upgrades and improvements as you see fit, then I’ll lend some credence to your criticisms. Until then, your arm chair quarterbacking of creation as a means of proving atheism rings hollow.

You can’t do better and you couldn’t come close. After tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of millions, of years of creation, we don’t even know how the brain works or what the adenoids are for, much less what the body’s full capabilities are. The complexity of creation and the simplicity of its design does nothing but point to an intelligent creator.

 

[crowonsnow]

I think that we are drifting off topic, but the fall was due to our having being given free will by the creator. If it were impossible for us to choose to reject God we would not be truly free.

The fall was due to our being designed as human and not as robots.

The “fall” and sin are the same thing.

Whether robots or human, what you’re saying is that a designer intentionally exposed these souls and bodies to sin, knowing they would all become infected and diseased.

 

[BlaineTog]

So what do you think human bodies were designed to do?

Be gods.

 

[BlaineTog]

The “fall” and sin are the same thing.

Whether robots or human, what you’re saying is that a designer intentionally exposed these souls and bodies to sin, knowing they would all become infected and diseased.

No, He intentionally exposed these people (the body/soul distinction is an error in thinking, albeit a useful error, in Christianity) to the opportunity to sin so that his name might not be the only name on the ballot so that they might be able to choose freely.

 

[crowonsnow]

No, He intentionally exposed these people (the body/soul distinction is an error in thinking, albeit a useful error, in Christianity) to the opportunity to sin so that his name might not be the only name on the ballot so that they might be able to choose freely.

That doesn’t make much sense. It’s like writing a computer program, and also writing another program that will infect the original program. Part of the purpose of the original program, therefore becomes to be infected by a virus program.

That makes absolutely no sense but is exactly what Christian creationism asserts in not accounting for the origins of sin.

According to Christian creationism, the original designer had to write the program for sin. Why would the original designer insert a viral subroutine called ***sin.exe ***in its programming that causes all kinds of bad things to happen?

 

[seekerz]

That doesn’t make much sense. It’s like writing a computer program, and also writing another program that will infect the original program. Part of the purpose of the original program, therefore becomes to be infected by a virus program.

That makes absolutely no sense but is exactly what Christian creationism asserts in not accounting for the origins of sin.

According to Christian creationism, the original designer had to write the program for sin. Why would the original designer insert a viral subroutine called ***sin.exe ***in its programming that causes all kinds of bad things to happen?

All sin is is the exercise of a person’s free will in defiance of God’s will. There is no sin.exe, there is humanwill.exe which can function in harmony with (obedience) or at odds with (sin) God’s will with good or bad consequences respectively.

Perfection or imperfection are dynamic, not static states, so the exercise of free will to commit sin does not imply that we were never perfect to begin with, simply that in choosing sin we lost perfection .

 

[justinthemartyr]

Now before i begin this thread i can’t promise that i will be responding to everything, just the interesting ones. I’m sorry i just don’t have enough time.

I had asked previously what other evidence there was for the existence of god? I read some links and i still don’t see it i see nature and natural answers but no real need for a higher power. (Let alone the question of which higher power, if i did see a higher power, all these arguments no more support the monothiestic god than it does the other creator god’s Odin, Ra’s father and mother (sky and earth can’t remeber the names) or say the rainbow serpent…)

But there is another problem with the argument from design. As a designer i could have designed at least humanity alot better. DNA is a rather poor replicator, bad mutations could be removed. Regeneration of cells could have been extended to at least 1000 years (a species that lives more makes more decisions based on the long run, and would be wiser). I would have made my children UV resistant, Perpahs even the ability to change the spectram of radiation visible. Harder skin so on so forth. Overall alot better design…

There would and still could be suffering both physical and emotional pain, so god not fear his creations not suffering,

I have heard the reply we are a fallen perfection. Just how far did we fall?

Anyway the point is. IF this creation is designed, it is a poor design and would in no way win a design award in a relative field of being creation. I argue that I given the resources and budget of a god could do a much better job.

Now i would love to hear your thoughts…

I would have to disagree.

We were created perfectly, with no character defects.

We had total freedom to choose God’s will, and we failed, therefore we have character defects from the deepest parts of our soul.

We no longer are perfectly fitting the desired design we were intended for. Only with God’s help, and our cooperation, can we remove those character defects which hinder us from doing God’s will.

Our bodies were created perfectly too, yet now have character defects.

So no, our entire being is no longer fitting it’s intended purpose, and therefore our bodies also have failed along with our souls. There is no such thing as a perfect body in this fallen world, but I believe we can get close to it with the sacraments of life.

 

[BlaineTog]

That doesn’t make much sense. It’s like writing a computer program, and also writing another program that will infect the original program. Part of the purpose of the original program, therefore becomes to be infected by a virus program.

You’re committing the strawman fallacy by collapsing “the opportunity to sin” to “sin,” and the two are worlds apart.

The purpose of the original program was to create gods. However, it is impossible to simply create a god. By definition, a god is something with freedom, so a god that was simply created as a god would not be a god at all but some kind of simulacrum. Gods need to be grown, to be given the option of ascending or not. (Note, there’s a bit of an ambiguity here between “god” and “God,” and though that’s largely intentional, it creates some weird interplay if you try to read what I’m saying about “gods” into “God,” which is a mistake).

*According to Christian creationism, the original designer had to write the program for sin. Why would the original designer insert a viral subroutine called ***sin.exe ****in its programming that causes all kinds of bad things to happen?

I specifically rejected this. Christian theology specifically rejects this.

 

[crowonsnow]

Perfection or imperfection are dynamic, not static states, so the exercise of free will to commit sin does not imply that we were never perfect to begin with, simply that in choosing sin we lost perfection .

Religiously speaking, something cannot be sinful and perfect at the same time. To believe so would render christian teaching nonsensical. Why redeem something that is still perfect?

If you’re claiming that sin can come from perfection, then yes, that is what christianity seems to be teaching.