I’m sure we could argue about evolution for a long time, and never convince each other. I am impressed with the amount of faith you have that all of the highly improbable things that had to happen really did happen, though. I’ll try to read the Dawkins book. I would reccommend “Darwin’s Black Box” by Michael Behe. Behe isn’t a Christian, and even believes in parts of evolution, but he’s come to the conclusion that there must be either space aliens or a creator.

As far as the imperfectly designed eye, the perfect Creator made Adam to live forever. I don’t know how much better Adam’s design was than ours, but he lived to be about 900 years old. He disobeyed God, and death was brought into the world, where God never intended it. If God is going to make a finite being, there has to be limitations somewhere.

The imperfect design leads to the question of why anything bad happens. Why are people born blind? Not because they sinned, but because we’re all suffering from the disease of sin. Why does God let a drunk driver kill a family? God could have stopped it. I don’t know why He allowed it, but the family and everything else belongs to God, and He decided it was time for them to die. If the drunk didn’t get drunk or drive, that family would have survived the night. His sin cost that family their lives. He made a choice for evil.

God allows us all to make choices. Whether we live to be 15 or 90, the result is the same. God is going to make sure that justice is served. Every person that’s done something bad to us will face the consequences. The problem is that we’re also going to face God for the bad things we’ve done.

We live in a time when God is patiently waiting for everyone to repent. He’s given us a conscience, and every time we sin, we do it with knowledge. Who among us hasn’t lied, stolen, looked at a woman with lust, or taken God’s name in vain? Anyone who has done those things has broken God’s law, and just like a criminal in America (who gets caught) must be punished, God can’t let guilty lawbreakers go free. His place of punishment is hell.

I know you don’t believe all of that, but I hope you’ll think about your conscience, and how many times you’ve broken God’s law.

I cannot argue as pervasively or as elegantly as others so I would at least suggest that you read Richard Dawkin’s “The Blind Watchmaker” or Daniel Dennett’s “Freedom Evolves” as they address the misconceptions you seem to have with evolution.

As for fraudulent science; there are plenty of other nonreligious factors to explain why scientists would fabricate evidence, the most compelling being monetary factors. Finding a “missing link” that would strengthen macro-evolution would bring fame and fortune. This alone is enough to motivate one to cheat without the need to suggest there is a scientific conspiracy to prove evolution as an alternative to God.

Your objection to number fourteen seems to suggest you lack a certain sense of imagination. To take your fish out of water example. It isn’t as though amphibians were suddenly spontaneously created, their ability to transition to breathing air a noted improvement instead being bound to the water. Instead there was (most likely) a plethora of transition stages that occurred. First it would have stuck in the shallows to avoid larger predators, then those with rigid fins with strong muscles that could use its fins to move about in the muddy shallows. Then those that were strong enough to move about by their fins alone in the mud. This followed by fish that could hold their breathe by escaping onto land from predators for short periods. Then those that could do it long and better. Eventually you would get something like a weak amphibian that still needs to be near the water but can breathe air.

Certainly the ability to process air for O² even in the minutest amount is a HUGE advantage as it provides the ability to escape predators for much longer than predecessors. Dawkins addresses this exact scenario in much greater detail illustrating how such steps make sense.

More importantly positing that a divine and perfect creator comes with its own costs in argument. If God created the human eye, why did he create it as a flawed device? Why cannot see observe the entire spectrum of light? Why can we not see better in failing light, or in almost complete darkness? More importantly why is the actual design imperfect if created by a perfect being? The optic nerve attaches to the eye in such a way as to make a blind spot in each eye. This is not a requirement for the design of an eye. The optic nerve could attach so as not to create a blind spot. why does it connect this way? Evolution suggests that it was an imperfect process that made an amazingly complex but ultimately imperfect organ. Creationists would have us believe a perfect deity created an imperfect organ or perhaps that it only appear to be imperfect because we are too feeble to understand it’s perfection. Which view makes the most sense?

More importantly though you seem to misunderstand the intentional view of the world, which is a limitation of being human. When viewing events, we as intentional beings are quick to assume (and ascribe) intentional viewpoints to everything. My thermostat “senses” that my home is cool cold and “tells” the furnace to turn on and heat my home. This is a terribly misleading representation of facts. My thermostat has a small piece of metal that shrinks as it cools (with the room temp) which at a point I’ve chosen completes a circuit that sends and electrical signal to the furnace. That’s is all it does, it has no intention, it is responding as it is required to do because of its design.

However not everything is designed that seems intentional. If every time I perform a ritual it rains doesn’t mean that I cause it to rain only that I have the luck to have it rain when I perform a ritual.

Dawkin uses this example to prove his point. If one sees an arch made from rock in nature the mind leaps to the conclusion that some designer, some builder must have made that arch. The concept that these rocks fell randomly into such an alignment is laughable as any minor deviation in position of any of the rocks would cause it to tumble apart. This is fault of our minds. It is easy to imagine that heavy rocks covered a hillside. The hill being softer than rock erodes quickly (relatively speaking) compared to the rock, thus after a significant amount of time the hill is gone and all that remains is the rock having covered the hill. It is no improbably that the rocks that remain might form an arch.

It is not a reasonable thing to think that without an immediate explanation of some complex thing that one describe a creator as the cause. However once the means are better understood the true cause is often impressive in its simplicity.

I’ve always thought it similar to those persons who claim that Stonehenge was created by aliens because there was no technology available at the time to explain how they lifted such large rocks atop such massive pillars. The simple solution is that they piled dirt into ramps so all they had to do was push the stone into position, rather than lift. Having removed the dirt the task seems impossible, but it actually rather simple.

In much the same way often seemingly complex natural events seem impossible but I think you’ll find more often than not their explanation is neither supernatural or super-complex.

11. Ms. Margulis acknowledges that no matter how unlikely a natural explanation seems, scientists have to choose the natural explanation. What if God really did something? (Some) scientists will have to explain it away.

14. In order to have even an extremely simple eye, you need light receptive cells, optic nerves, and the brain’s ability to interpret the data. All of this has to come about in the same animal. Let’s say a kid is born with an optic nerve, and not the other two faculties. Why does he have an optic nerve?

The problem with this isn’t just with eyes. It extends to all of the systems. For example, veins, blood and heart have to come together. Any of the two, without the third means they’re useless.

A few questions remain. Let’s say the first male mutated into existence. I hope for his sake that he found a female, or his kind would cease to exist. What about the first fish to crawl up on land. Did he have gills or lungs? I hope he had lungs, so that he doesn’t suffocate on the beach. But I guess if he had lungs, then he wouldn’t have lived long enough to crawl up on land.

Where is the amazing amounts of fossils of these in-between animals? Why did scientists feel like they had to fabricate evidence, such as Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, Java Man, Heidelberg Man and Neanderthal Man, all proven to be hoaxes?

If I told you the F-16 sitting on the tarmac came together when a tornado passed through a junk yard, you’d be right to make fun of me. We know there is a creator, because there is so much design. We know there is a creator because there is a creation.

There are a ton of problems with evolution. I guess I can throw out my questions about the beginning of life, and where the matter in the universe came from. Where our conscience came from, where the scientific laws came from, and a hundred other questions. The space aliens caused it all.

I think it all stems from the fact that the space aliens idea is much less offensive than a God we’re going to have to stand before on Judgment Day. A Judge who is infinitely righteous and just, and has to punish sin wherever it is found. A Judge who said that all liars will have their part in the lake of fire. Who said that no thief, fornicator or blasphemer can enter the kingdom of heaven. Who isn’t on those lists? Who isn’t being told to change their life or face the eternal consequences? I see the attraction to the idea of space aliens, since it allows people to live life any way they want, but maybe it would be beneficial to find the truth–no matter how offensive or silly you might think it is.