death dealer wrote:I assume that most proponents of Intelligent Design/Creationism would categorize the Designer/God as a benevolent being. Are they f u c king kidding? Really? There is absolutely no evidence other than the occasional anecdotal personal account to indicate that if there is a God, which there isn't, that he is anything other than one mean motherf u c king POS with a really sick sense of humor.

And based on his design work on the planet and the universe, he would have failed out of most decent engineering programs in the first year.

Your provocative and uncharacteristically hateful logic is puzzling, DD.
We are born. We die. Perhaps the benevolence of existence or lack thereof results not from a benevolent or
malevolent God, but from what we ourselves make of the blessings and gifts of life. When a drunk kills an innocent is that the fault of the automotive designer?
The engineering classes you celebrate as superior to God's intelligent design are only part of our latest inadequate
attempts to describe a powerful and orderly universe. How can you see a "failed" engineering design in the universe?
To me, there pretty clearly appears to be order. Physics works in our observable environment. The planets move, the rains fall, life finds a way. Engineering classes are only part of our latest inadequate human attempts to describe a powerful and orderly universe, greater in scope than what the frail human mind can comprehend.
But strive we must to comprehend! When not otherwise occupied in raping and killing each other, humans have spent a considerable portion of their existence pondering the nature of the universe. To wonder and try to comprehend is part of the joy and glory of being human, and we can be glorious indeed! But Big Bang, Intelligent Design, and String Teory aside, do you really think we have done more than scratch the surface in our knowledge of the universe?
We limit ourselves unnecessarily when we look only in the mirror. But that's the essential problem with the
arguments of believers and non-believers alike. We look at ourselves in the mirrow, find what we see to be
inadequate, and blame God. Just because I cannot possibly understand something fully does that mean that I should
not strive to understand? Does it mean that I must confine my understanding to the image I see in the mirror? Does it preclude the possibility of God?
I love math, debates and science projects, but faith is a choice, not a science experiment. Whether you believe in
God, yourself, or nothing, you have chosen to believe something. One of the central truths of the Judeo-Christian
tradition is that when we humans fail to recognize some power greater than ourselves, we tend towards evil. This has been consistently true, at least for the latest 10,000 years of human existence on earth that we know about. We fvck up a great deal more without God than with God.
You may disparage God and Christians all you want, but there is more useless fear and hopelessness in atheism and
atheists than among believers. The response to this thread by all you ardent and committed atheists, although not
surprising, is unnecessarily hateful and limiting. We humans are defined by what we believe. In your near-sighted hubris, you have defined humans hatefully and hopelessly.
There is another choice. I prefer an approach that does not laughably and tragically establish mankind as the limit
to the universe. I vote with Moses, C.S. Lewis, and Hub McCann, and a host of others who have chosen to see the
order, blessings and hopefulness of the universe without hating either God or mankind.