That may be true, but as it stands,we are not furnished with any evidence at all.
Since the subject of this thread is Richard Dawkins, my comments may mostly be about evolution, not sure yet, though. Anyway, regarding evidence, when you attempt to make conclusions about God, you are starting from a conclusion that God is not real, so how can you see an intelligence behind the design of anything with such a dogmatic, heavily-guarded paradigm?
Funny thing is, I see no evidence at all that atheists don't believe in God, based on the fact that they spend so much time talking about Him. Or is talking about the make-believe a badge of honor and prerequisite for atheism? If your passion is to talk about things you don't believe in, that seems pretty strange to me!
To wit, I don't believe the moon is made of cheese so if there was a forum that said it is, I wouldn't go to it with vigor and passion, debating with them, like so many atheists do at Christian sites, because the notion is absurd to me. Yet you, thinking Christianity to be absurd, nonetheless make a big effort to bother with it.
I guess you love absurdity as much as you think Christians do!
What do you have to gain by coming to this forum? Not one atheist has ever answered me why they insist on coming to Christian sites to insult and pester the people there. Especially since I have never encountered an atheist that has even a modicum of desire to be open-minded and willing to learn when they come to Christian sites, because as I have learned, atheists have it all figured out! As a Christian I love the bible, studying it, and involving myself in similar things. So why is atheism not stimulating enough for you, that you need to bother Christians about what stimulates them?
You have never experienced the healing hand of God on you - a miracle - yet you know
for certain that miracles don't exist. Much like you have never searched the entire universe but you presume to know God isn't in it. If I say I have experienced a miracle, you will dismiss it as superstition, wishful thinking, or give it a naturalistic explanation, or something else; because as I said, you believe there is no such thing as miracles. This is the searching, objective mind of science, and to think it is Christians that are always accused of circular thinking!
That begs the question why the designer thought it prudent to design the ichneumon wasp, with its rather gruesome method of reproduction. It was the studying of this parasitic wasp that made the young Charles Darwin question the probability of a benign designer. That, and the death of his favorite daughter Annie, who succumbed to scarlet fever at the age of ten.
On what moral basis do you declare the ichneumon wasp's reproduction method to be gruesome? Because
you don't like it? What of it? To use "evolutionary biology-speak", the universe doesn't care if you don't like it. The wasp certainly is happy with the arrangement and by evolutionary standards the wasp is doing nothing wrong, because there is no wrong or right in godless evolution. So why do you see something unpalatable with the ichneumon wasp?
And why is it okay for nature to do what it wants, IE: create gruesome wasps, but
not okay for a Creator to make His creation as He pleases? Man wants God to be made into his image, and rejects Him and excoriates His character when He doesn't conform to our expectation of Him. Nothing new under the sun there!
Regarding your mention of the word, "benign". The Creator would be a meanie (not benign) for making that wasp, but as long as there is no creator you're fine with it, right?
As to the death of Darwin's daughter, why is a human being more important than a Streptococcus bacteria? This is not a flippant question, it is a very important one for you to explain, seeing as every evolutionary biologist, Darwinist, etc., that I've read or watched say humans are nothing special as pertains to our huge,
meaningless cosmos. That's why atheistic communism, whose progenitor, Karl Marx - a contemporary of Darwin, one who was influenced by him - could kill 100 million people in the 20th century, because they believed life was meaningless, and people were nothing special at all, nothing more than just extremely unlikely occurrences in a vast cosmos that
doesn't need them, much less
cares about them.
So whereas Darwin may see scarlet fever as being maleficence if a Creator was responsible for it, according to Darwin's "strive and survive" paradigm, it is a most natural thing when an organism negatively impacts another in order to assure it's own survival.
This no doubt sounds crude and heartless on my account, (and it is not intended to be) but it is not me that makes an idol out of "survival of the fittest" and then cries about it when it doesn't go as I would like it to.
The bug that killed Darwin's daughter was just doing what it needs to do to survive.
When all of creation is indeed designed, we may wonder, when we marvel at the speed of the cheetah, so well-adapted to catch the gazelle, and when we behold the evasive jumps of the gazelle, so well-adapted to escape the charging cheetah, whose side the designer is on.
I'm sure you're aware that Christians believe the world was perfect at the start and mankind screwed things up by sinning against God, resulting in the fallen world we are in? This resulted in death being brought in to His creation, for as the bible says, the wages of sin is death. It is never a pretty outcome when we fall into the hands of the living God in disobedience. So your comment about whose side God is on is a moot point, because God never designed things the way they are now. We have freewill, and we chose to use that freewill in rebellion, and have been blaming God and pointing our self-righteous finger at Him for the horrible consequences ever since.
Also, your rather terse description of the theory of evolution, ignites in me a small suspicion that your knowledge of the matter at hand is, shall we say, wanting?
Nice one, give yourself a round of applause!
Since when is belittling others equal to an intellectually sound, substantive argument? It's hilarious to me that atheists think that a so-called terse explanation or comment from a Christian means he is "wanting". I almost expect you to ask me to compare I.Q.s with you! Go ahead, you know you wanna!
If you can stop thinking so highly of yourself for just a moment, perhaps you can consider that maybe I just don't have the time, or desire, to engage in long and endless debates with atheists, who by my experience in dealing with them, are not interested in what I say, whether I write 10 words or 10000. Nor do I owe it to you to write until my hands fall off, so you can tell me about parasitic wasps and pat yourself on the back at how smart you are - in your mind - at foiling the dumb, inept Christian.
If I were on your side of the fence, it would make me uncomfortable that the people who support the theory are by far the brightest people in the field, while the ones who agree with me are barely capable of constructing a proper sentence.
Ad hominem attacks, I never met an atheist that didn't use them! Good on ya'! That's a really nice display of atheistic self-superiority and smugness. Or more aptly, childishness and
insecurity.
By the way, here's what I think is the difference between random design and purposeful design, using art as the example : the former is finger painting and the latter is a Mona Lisa. You don't look at both and decide they were both randomly designed. Or maybe
you do? I know you'll disagree with that, because in your mindset, given enough time
anything is possible. In fact, anything is likely to you,
except God. Go figure.
Isaiah 2:11
The eyes of the arrogant will be humbled
and human pride brought low;
the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.
In all the years I have listened to him that is probably the most honest of all his statements.
