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Why do christians put limits on their gods's power?

MrPudding

This is something that has come up a few times and again today.

Christian believe that god is all powerful and capable of doing whatever he wants. Why do they insist of limiting him on the basic of limited human imagination?

As an atheist I often wonder why there is evil in the world. I am told it is not god's doing, but ours. I can't understand this. God created everything, why leave the possibility of evil.

Christians argue that evil is possible because god allows us freewill. Why can christians not accept that if god was all powerful, and had the desire, he could create an existence where we had free will but had no concept of doing evil.

If there was no evil, and humans simply did not have the knowledge to know of it, how would that impact our free will? As has been pointed out before, god limits and restrict many positive things for his favourite creations, like the ability to fly or to breath under water, this is apparently not in conflict with our free will. If not then why would not giving us the knowledge to do wrong to each other be such a gross insult to our free will?

I do not believe in your god, but I simply cannot understand why, if he is as powerful as you claim, he could not simply remove evil, or not allow it's existence in the first place.

Why?

MrP

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Mal-Adjusted

MrPudding wrote: »

Why can christians not accept that if god was all powerful, and had the desire, he could create an existence where we had free will but had no concept of doing evil.

You mean free will without actually having free will?
Well done genius.

santing

Dades wrote: »

An omnipotent god would have bleached our petri dish long ago and started over.

You nearly hit the nail on the head... There are zillions of reasons why God should have done this. However, if God would bleach our petri dish, He would admit defeat, wouldn't He? And if He is defeated, than something must have been bigger than Himself, meaning He can't be omnipotent ...

So no, it is a prove of an omnipotent God that He still will work our mess into His purpose and glory.

Dades

santing wrote: »

So no, it is a prove of an omnipotent God that He still will work our mess into His purpose and glory.

You indeed are a Shaolin Monk of mental gymnastics. :pac:

Biro

-JammyDodger- wrote: »

Actually, it does. Rockbeer has pointed it out very clearly. Anything that is considered to be absolutely perfect in all respects (and, as Rockbeer has said, perfection is absolute, not relative) must never create something that isn't perfect, if it does it isn't absolutely perfect. It's simple. Absolute perfection cannot ever do anything that isn't absolutely perfect, if it does, by definition, it isn't absolutely perfect.

You're actually wrong. The highlighted sentence there is the problem. What if the teacher taught the perfect student that the answer to the question "what colour is red?" is actually "green", so the student answered the question as "green" like taught, would still get 100% and still be a perfect student, even though the answer to an outside on-looker was incorrect. It was actually the intended answer.
Therefore a perfect being who creates an imperfect world by deliberate design and it turns out exactly as planned means that it was designed perfectly, according to an imperfect design specification.

PDN

santing wrote: »

You nearly hit the nail on the head... There are zillions of reasons why God should have done this. However, if God would bleach our petri dish, He would admit defeat, wouldn't He? And if He is defeated, than something must have been bigger than Himself, meaning He can't be omnipotent ...

So no, it is a prove of an omnipotent God that He still will work our mess into His purpose and glory.

I have to disagree with you here, Santing. I don't think that wiping the whole thing out would be a denial of omnipotence at all. Quite the opposite.

I believe the reason why God hasn't wiped us out of existence is because of his mercy.

Biro

Wicknight wrote: »

Are you suggesting that we have random acts of unimaginable suffering caused by natural disasters so people can know how "powerful" God is?

I'm still trying to figure out how you managed to arrive at that conclusion...

Zombrex

people are getting slightly distracted by the term "perfect". It should be remembered that Christians are the ones who define God as "perfect", there is little point for them to get annoyed at atheists for saying the world we live in is not perfect.

Personally to me knowing what exactly is "perfect" is not necessary to judge that this universe is not it, no more than I have to fully understand infinity to know that 72 isn't infinity.

The idea that this universe is as perfect as one could make it is quite simply ridiculous. It is on par with JC saying that the designer in Intelligent Design is perfect because life is "perfect" because it does what it is "supposed" to do (something I notice he has stopped saying, one hopes because he realises who silly an argument it is).

The universe is not perfect. And I see absolutely no reason to suppose that it is as good as it possibly good be.

While Christians can assert that it is arrogant to claim that, I think it is far more arrogant to proclaim that God has been "revealed" his existence as the creator through the universe and then to make excuses why the universe doesn't look like it is created by a perfect being.

We are back to our old friend cyclical reasoning. The universe strongly suggests God exists, therefore we assume he does. How do we explain all the problems with the universe? Well if we assume God exists then we must assume he has a good reason for all these problems, even if we don't know what it is. And around and around we go. All this ignores that a universe full of problems doesn't suggest that God exists.

Rather than taking a universe full of problems, asserting God exists for some reason, and then making a set of excuses for all the problems it seems far easier and logical to just say God doesn't exist.

Zombrex

santing wrote: »

Well, for starters, I am one ... and I know quite a few like minded. However, I do think that you will struggle to get an answer on questions relating to the meaning of life, suffering, etc. if you reject the authenticy of the answer given by the creator. The Bible starts with Creation, Fall and Salvation. It also finishes with that theme as it is central to God's revelation.

There is little point talking about struggling to know something when you at the same time reject modern methods of discovery and learning. I'm not sure what methods you used to determine that reality matches the literal history of the Bible, but I am pretty sure that these methods were all most certainly seriously flawed and incomplete when compared to the methods scientists use to determine the Bible isn't a literal history of the universe.

So I would retort that you will struggle if you reject tested ways of discovery and learning.

santing wrote: »

I think this has been or should be discussed in a separate threat.

Agreed, my point wasn't that it is correct, but that the vast majority of Christians believe it to be correct, which I hope we can both agree on.

santing wrote: »

Most inmates in a prison would agree with you... it is not their fault that they are locked up but the fault of that lousy judge. :rolleyes:

You will notice that I'm not Adam.

So yes, if I was locked up in prision by a judge for something my great great great ... great great grand father did, I would be very annoyed at the lousy judge.

Human beings gave up on the idea of inherited guilt (punishing the son for the crimes of the father) hundreds of years ago as something immoral and down right wrong. Funny a "perfect" God didn't

rockbeer

PDN wrote: »

But, of course, there can never be such a thing as a perfect building.

Well indeed. I've no problem accepting the idea that perfection is something to be strived for but never attained. This is a realistic reflection of our human limitations. I agree, there can never be a perfect building, nor - more significantly, in this context - a perfect builder. Each is as impossible as the other.

For once, we agree!

What is surprising is that you invoke the spectre of a perfect creator (something which I believe to be as impossible as the perfect builder) and yet imbue him with the same limitations as a human builder.

A human builder cannot build the perfect house because he himself is not perfect. If he were, by definition he would be able to do so.

It's senseless to remove the limitation of imperfection from your deity and yet to continue to apply it to his creations. Either both are subject to the limitations of imperfection or neither are.

PDN wrote: »

So far, Rockbeer, all you have done is repeated your claim that a perfect God can, by definition, only create something that is absolutely perfect. You have offered no coherent argument to back it up and just repeating it again, while it appears to have convinced Jammy Dodger, is not going to make it any more convincing to those of us who would like to see some reasoning to back the claim up.

The fact that you reject my reasoning doesn't mean I haven't provided any. I would say you continue to persist in denial despite the inherent - and obvious - logical contradiction of your position.

PDN wrote: »

But, once again, you are apparently discussing a 'God' of some other religion, not the Christian God. Whether we take the first few chapters of Genesis metaphorically or as literal history we can see that God is clearly described in Scripture as doing things through a process. This applies to Creation, the revealing of prophecy, the writing of Scripture, and the implementation and application of the plan of redemption.

A process, by its very nature, means that something is not complete until it is completed. It must pass through phases of incompleteness which, by definition, are less than perfect.

Process, I accept, introduces another element into the argument. I accept that you can have faith that this universe is part of a process which is not currently perfect but will be so on completion. I see no evidence for this supposition, but still, if that's what you want to believe...

However, I understood christians to believe that a better place already exists. Are not the dead of generations supposed to be there already? Suggesting that god is capable of significant improvements right now. (An idea that I maintain is also implied by the idea of his own perfection).

So the question still remains that if god is capable of making things better right now, why doesn't our universe demonstrate it?

Dades

rockbeer wrote: »

A human builder cannot build the perfect house because he himself is not perfect. If he were, by definition he would be able to do so.

A human builder can at least do a decent job of building a house that does not shake, flood, or spew magma.

By no means perfect, but it's a start!

rockbeer

Dades wrote: »

A human builder can at least do a decent job of building a house that does not shake, flood, or spew magma.

Well, I've heard that some can at least!

PDN

rockbeer wrote: »

What is surprising is that you invoke the spectre of a perfect creator (something which I believe to be as impossible as the perfect builder) and yet imbue him with the same limitations as a human builder.

A human builder cannot build the perfect house because he himself is not perfect. If he were, by definition he would be able to do so.

It's senseless to remove the limitation of imperfection from your deity and yet to continue to apply it to his creations. Either both are subject to the limitations of imperfection or neither are.

Not so. A perfect builder could build a house that is perfectly fit for the purpose for which it was intended, but that does not mean that it is the most perfect house imaginable.

The problem is that we all use the word 'perfect' in different ways:
a) Perfect as in the best imaginable, and unable to be improved in any shape or form. (In this sense God is perfect.)

b) Perfect as in fit for its intended purpose. ("I need a pen to jot down this number. Thank you, that will be perfect.")

c) Perfect as in on target in one's development. ("Andrew Murray is now #4 in the world's tennis rankings - his progress this year has been perfect.")

The fact that you reject my reasoning doesn't mean I haven't provided any. I would say you continue to persist in denial despite the inherent - and obvious - logical contradiction of your position.

I see no reasoning. You state that it is impossible for a Perfect being to create anything that is imperfect. You need to demonstrate why. I cannot be expected to accept something just because you declare it to be so.

Process, I accept, introduces another element into the argument. I accept that you can have faith that this universe is part of a process which is not currently perfect but will be so on completion. I see no evidence for this supposition, but still, if that's what you want to believe..

.
I don't need to show you any evidence other than that is part of the overall Christian teaching as based on Scripture. You (and others) are arguing that the Christian concept of God is incompatible with the present state of the universe. Yet the Christian teaching concerning God is that He has not finished with the universe. Therefore it is wrong to assert that there is any contradiction between the state of the universe and the Christian teaching about God.

However, I understood christians to believe that a better place already exists. Are not the dead of generations supposed to be there already? Suggesting that god is capable of significant improvements right now. (An idea that I maintain is also implied by the idea of his own perfection).

So the question still remains that if god is capable of making things better right now, why doesn't our universe demonstrate it?

I think you are falling for popular modern misconceptions about heaven rather than the classical Christian understanding or indeed the Biblical teaching.

Heaven is not a better or more perfect world. We are told little enough about heaven in the Bible, but it appears to be a waiting room for the redeemed who have died until, through the resurrection from the dead, they take their place on a perfect world.

Heaven is a place where people go after they have exercised their free will on earth. We are not told that we exercise free will in heaven.

A marriage, which Scripture uses as a picture of eternal life, may provide us with a useful analogy. You exercise your free will before the wedding to choose your marriage partner. But, after the wedding, you no longer have that choice. Yet, if we were to skip the choice bit and go straight to the marriage (arranged marriage) then most of us would see that as less than perfect because we want the freedom to choose.

Biro

Wicknight wrote: »

Rather than taking a universe full of problems, asserting God exists for some reason, and then making a set of excuses for all the problems it seems far easier and logical to just say God doesn't exist.

True, but what's easy isn't necessarily correct.

PDN

Dades wrote: »

A human builder can at least do a decent job of building a house that does not shake, flood, or spew magma.

By no means perfect, but it's a start!

But a perfect builder would be able to build a house and property that utilised all these things to provide a constant source of energy (as in Iceland harnessing geothermal power), and constructing the most perfect garden containing wonderful islands and mountain ranges etc.

However, this wouldn't work if the tenant of the house refused to follow the builder's instructions and insisted on sticking his fingers into electrical sockets, locking his children in cupboards, camping in a tent on the very spot where the artificial lake is being constructed, and hanging a hammock over the very spot where the vents release the geothermal energy.

Zombrex

Biro wrote: »

True, but what's easy isn't necessarily correct.

Certainly not, as something like string theory demonstrates.

But what I meant was easier in the context of the common Christian assertion that the universe reveals that it obviously has a creator that was perfect and good.

That is only obvious if one then factors in a whole load of excuses to explain away things like suffering, based on the axiom that the creator already exists So when asked why if God exists and is perfect and good is the world so full of suffering the response is because God exists and is perfect and good there must be a reason for this.

That is making the assertion that was supposed to be obvious for the universe in fact very convoluted and complicated. Which causes (or should cause) the person to go back and re-evaluate how obvious the assertion really was to begin with.

Again using the example of Intelligent Design, this is often a point raised about the excuse that one can explain away all the imperfection in life by using the Fall.

The assertion, made by people like JC, is that life is obviously designed by something of vast intelligence and power. When a Biblical Creationist like JC is presented with all the examples in biology where the assumed "design" would appear to be pretty stupid JC puts forward the Fall to explain all this. Life was created perfect, but then the Fall happened and changed all life into it's far from perfect state at the moment.

The point is why introduce that unnecessary middle bit at all. If life doesn't look designed now which is a more reasonable conclusion, it was designed perfectly then something happened that changed that, or it simply wasn't designed at all?

The reason for suggesting that life was designed by God is that it is supposed to look like it was designed by God. If you then come up with countless examples of where it doesn't look at all like it was designed, by God or anyone else, the sensible thing to do is to drop the original assertion that life was designed by God because it looks like it was. What is not a particularly sensible conclusion is to still maintain the position that it was designed by God even if it doesn't look like it was because of convoluted explanation X (eg the Fall).

If you have lost the original justification for an assertion you don't hold on to the assertion by introducing even more fantastical assertions.

The same holds for the idea that the universe looks like it was created by a perfect and good creator for us.

If there are a lot of reasons to believe that assertion doesn't hold any more (and I can think of plenty) it is far more sensible to drop the assertion, rather than hold on to the assertion and introduce a series of unsupported guesses to explain away why the universe might not look it was created by a perfect and good creator but still be.

Zombrex

PDN wrote: »

However, this wouldn't work if the tenant of the house refused to follow the builder's instructions and insisted on sticking his fingers into electrical sockets, locking his children in cupboards, camping in a tent on the very spot where the artificial lake is being constructed, and hanging a hammock over the very spot where the vents release the geothermal energy.

Again you are missing the point.

If a occupant can stick his fingers into electrical sockets then it isn't a perfect building

A perfect building is not a building that requires the occupant to behave in a particular manner to avoid harming himself. Quite the opposite in fact. A perfect building would provide all the comforts desired by the occupant with no potential for harm or distress.

I appreciate that it is hard for you (and I) to imagine a perfect building, so it is hard to visualise it and thus we are prone to sticking imperfect designs, like wall socked and cupboards, into the building to try and visualise it.

But this is down to our lack of imagination ability, rather than a flaw in the logic of a perfect building or builder.

The same holds for the idea of a perfect universe. Any attempt made by Christians here to describe the problems with a perfect universe have been done by introducing imperfect design into the equation.

PDN

Wicknight wrote: »

Again you are missing the point.

If a occupant can stick his fingers into electrical sockets then it isn't a perfect building

A perfect building is not a building that requires the occupant to behave in a particular manner to avoid harming himself. Quite the opposite in fact. A perfect building would provide all the comforts desired by the occupant with no potential for harm or distress.

Apparently your perfect building is a padded cell.

I'm trying to think of any comment I could make that would be funnier than that fact. I don't think I can do it.

CodeMonkey

PDN wrote: »

Apparently your perfect building is a padded cell.

I'm trying to think of any comment I could make that would be funnier than that fact. I don't think I can do it.

A perfect building doesn't have to be a padded cell. Wicknight is right that you are limited by your imagination. I can easily imagine a better house with some very fancy high tech monitoring gadgets that can stop you getting into trouble.

It's like cars with no airbags and moderns cars that has airbags that inflates when you crash so you don't bang your head on the steering wheel. It just needs a hidden mechanism to save you, not make the steering wheel out of jello.

A perfect house is a house that offers all the comforts the occupant desires....like what wicknight said.

Dades

PDN wrote: »

However, this wouldn't work if the tenant of the house refused to follow the builder's instructions and insisted on sticking his fingers into electrical sockets, locking his children in cupboards, camping in a tent on the very spot where the artificial lake is being constructed, and hanging a hammock over the very spot where the vents release the geothermal energy.

You seem to be confusing my cryptic reference to natural disasters with one regarding natural resources!

Unless by the above you mean that people should know better than to live near tectonic fault lines, coastal areas, or active volcanoes.

Zombrex

PDN wrote: »

Apparently your perfect building is a padded cell.

You are doing it again. :rolleyes:

You need a padded cell because of the flaws in the under lying structure, such as hard bricks or sharp timber. Neither of these are perfect building material, they are used because they are available and relatively cheap and for a long time because no one had figured out a better way of doing it. We then need to pad them for protection. This is far from ideal as any architect will tell you, and in fact there has been a lot of advances in producing soft but strong material just just such problems.

The same applies for things like wall sockets. They are far from perfect, they are flawed design that is kept on because it has become a standard, but since then there have been a number of advances in how power can be provided in safer more convent fashion.

Again all these "problems" you are coming up with are down to your lack of imagination, rather than flaws with the idea itself. The same is true of the assertion that the universe is some how the best it possibly could be.

[Deleted User]

PDN wrote: »

while it appears to have convinced Jammy Dodger, [it] is not going to make it any more convincing to those of us who would like to see some reasoning to back the claim up

Actually, I only believe things that are backed up with reason. I didn't need Rockbeer to convince me of anything. I'm quite capable of drawing my own conclusions, thanks.

Biro wrote: »

You're actually wrong. The highlighted sentence there is the problem. What if the teacher taught the perfect student that the answer to the question "what colour is red?" is actually "green", so the student answered the question as "green" like taught, would still get 100% and still be a perfect student, even though the answer to an outside on-looker was incorrect. It was actually the intended answer.
Therefore a perfect being who creates an imperfect world by deliberate design and it turns out exactly as planned means that it was designed perfectly, according to an imperfect design specification.

You're missing the point.

Christians claim that God is perfect in all respects, in every single possible way. Right? The key phrases there being "in all respects" and "every possible way". Ok, so now that's clear, I'll move on.

If a being who meets the above criteria, creates or does something that isn't perfect, then it isn't perfect in all respects (It can't be, that's a contradiction). As it has done something imperfect, that results in it not being perfect in every possible way. Thus, it no longer meets the appropriate criteria, so it can not be considered perfect in all respects.

That leads to an interesting result, one which can be gotten to in one of two ways:

1.
God is absolutely perfect in every single possible way. But, he has created something that isn't perfect. Wait a second, that means he isn't perfect in every possible way... (Don't try to argue that a being that is perfect in all possible ways can create something imperfect. It cannot. And don't try to say the universe isn't perfect, we as meer Humans can see that it isn't).

2.
God was never absolutely perfect in every possible way to begin with, so making something that wasn't perfect was never an issue. I think that this is the admittance by Christians, that most atheists would like to see.

There aren't any other possibilities.

PDN

-JammyDodger- wrote: »

If a being who meets the above criteria, creates or does something that isn't perfect, then it isn't perfect in all respects (It can't be, that's a contradiction). As it has done something imperfect, that results in it not being perfect in every possible way. Thus, it no longer meets the appropriate criteria, so it can not be considered perfect in all respects.

Incorrect. You are jumping to a false conclusion. It does not logically follow that a perfect being cannot make something that is less than perfect. That is a leap of logic.

You are failing to distinguish between something that is perfectly made and something that is made perfect.

[Deleted User]

PDN wrote: »

Incorrect. You are jumping to a false conclusion. It does not logically follow that a perfect being cannot make something that is less than perfect. That is a leap of logic.

You are failing to distinguish between something that is perfectly made and something that is made perfect.

Is God perfect in every single, possible way? Every single way? If he is, he cannot make something imperfect. If he makes something imperfect (while trying to do it perfectly, perhaps), it follows, that he is not perfect in at least one respect. If he is imperfect in at least one respect, he cannot be perfect in every single way.

Fanny Cradock

PDN wrote: »

Incorrect. You are jumping to a false conclusion. It does not logically follow that a perfect being cannot make something that is less than perfect. That is a leap of logic.

You are failing to distinguish between something that is perfectly made and something that is made perfect.

Yeah, this would be my line of thought. BTW, I like dig the new sig! As the Yanks would say: MLK was awesome!

PDN

-JammyDodger- wrote: »

Is God perfect in every single, possible way? Every single way? If he is, he cannot make something imperfect. If he makes something imperfect (while trying to do it perfectly, perhaps), it follows, that he is not perfect in at least one respect. If he is imperfect in at least one respect, he cannot be perfect in every single way.

Repeating your logical error several times does not, alas, make it valid.

There is no reason why a perfect Being should not be able, if He chooses, to make an imperfect object.

If a perfect God makes a clothes peg, that peg does not need to be the most perfect peg imaginable. It just needs to be sufficient to hold the washing on the line.

[Deleted User]

PDN wrote: »

Repeating your logical error several times does not, alas, make it valid.

There is no reason why a perfect Being should not be able, if He chooses, to make an imperfect object.

If a perfect God makes a clothes peg, that peg does not need to be the most perfect peg imaginable. It just needs to be sufficient to hold the washing on the line.

I can see what your reasoning is. And, I can see where you perceive my logical error. But, I have to disagree. If He chose not to make the world perfect, very well. But, in doing so, he is making himself imperfect. Let me explain. To use a previously used analogy, a student who always recieves 100% is, in respect to academic performance, perfect. If the student consciously decides to just get 90 or so percent in a test, he can no longer be considered a perfect student; No matter what the excuse is. God, in making an imperfect world, is making himself imperfect in one respect: the level of perfection of his productions. Even if he consciously made the world imperfect, it's still his production, thus, the level of perfection of his productions can never be considered perfect again, making him imperfect in at least one respect. If he is imperfect in one respect, he is not absolutely perfect. This is getting pedantic, but, at least to me, it's a valid point.

santing

-JammyDodger- wrote: »

If the student consciously decides to just get 90 or so percent in a test, he can no longer be considered a perfect student;

You cannot compare God's creation with a capability test. God didn't make the world as a test for his capability.

[Deleted User]

santing wrote: »

You cannot compare God's creation with a capability test. God didn't make the world as a test for his capability.

If that's all you took from my post, then you've missed my point entirely.

Biro

-JammyDodger- wrote: »

I can see what your reasoning is. And, I can see where you perceive my logical error. But, I have to disagree. If He chose not to make the world perfect, very well. But, in doing so, he is making himself imperfect. Let me explain. To use a previously used analogy, a student who always recieves 100% is, in respect to academic performance, perfect. If the student consciously decides to just get 90 or so percent in a test, he can no longer be considered a perfect student; No matter what the excuse is. God, in making an imperfect world, is making himself imperfect in one respect: the level of perfection of his productions. Even if he consciously made the world imperfect, it's still his production, thus, the level of perfection of his productions can never be considered perfect again, making him imperfect in at least one respect. If he is imperfect in one respect, he is not absolutely perfect. This is getting pedantic, but, at least to me, it's a valid point.

No, read my example again. The student deciding not to be perfect any more is different, they're ceasing to be perfect. In my example I showed you that they are taught that one of the questions needs to be answered incorrectly (or imperfectly) in order to achieve the perfect result to that obscure test. The student does what is necessary and in doing so achieves exactly what was required of him, thus remaining perfect. It doesn't matter that the answer is imperfect, he was required to answer it imperfectly in order to achieve the perfect result.

Biro

Wicknight wrote: »

Certainly not, as something like string theory demonstrates.

But what I meant was easier in the context of the common Christian assertion that the universe reveals that it obviously has a creator that was perfect and good.

That is only obvious if one then factors in a whole load of excuses to explain away things like suffering, based on the axiom that the creator already exists So when asked why if God exists and is perfect and good is the world so full of suffering the response is because God exists and is perfect and good there must be a reason for this.

That is making the assertion that was supposed to be obvious for the universe in fact very convoluted and complicated. Which causes (or should cause) the person to go back and re-evaluate how obvious the assertion really was to begin with.

Again using the example of Intelligent Design, this is often a point raised about the excuse that one can explain away all the imperfection in life by using the Fall.

The assertion, made by people like JC, is that life is obviously designed by something of vast intelligence and power. When a Biblical Creationist like JC is presented with all the examples in biology where the assumed "design" would appear to be pretty stupid JC puts forward the Fall to explain all this. Life was created perfect, but then the Fall happened and changed all life into it's far from perfect state at the moment.

The point is why introduce that unnecessary middle bit at all. If life doesn't look designed now which is a more reasonable conclusion, it was designed perfectly then something happened that changed that, or it simply wasn't designed at all?

The reason for suggesting that life was designed by God is that it is supposed to look like it was designed by God. If you then come up with countless examples of where it doesn't look at all like it was designed, by God or anyone else, the sensible thing to do is to drop the original assertion that life was designed by God because it looks like it was. What is not a particularly sensible conclusion is to still maintain the position that it was designed by God even if it doesn't look like it was because of convoluted explanation X (eg the Fall).

If you have lost the original justification for an assertion you don't hold on to the assertion by introducing even more fantastical assertions.

The same holds for the idea that the universe looks like it was created by a perfect and good creator for us.

If there are a lot of reasons to believe that assertion doesn't hold any more (and I can think of plenty) it is far more sensible to drop the assertion, rather than hold on to the assertion and introduce a series of unsupported guesses to explain away why the universe might not look it was created by a perfect and good creator but still be.

This is a good post to be fair, you've explained your stance very well. I don't have all the answers, nor pretend to. However, I also like this post :

Wicknight wrote: »

I appreciate that it is hard for you (and I) to imagine a perfect building, so it is hard to visualise it and thus we are prone to sticking imperfect designs, like wall socked and cupboards, into the building to try and visualise it.

But this is down to our lack of imagination ability, rather than a flaw in the logic of a perfect building or builder.

Just because we can't imagine it, doesn't mean it can't exist!