A complex case against intelligent design

[Polymath257]

Good video on the problems with materialism:

Of course, every materialist I have given this video to has disagreed with every subjective judgment presented even if the evidence clearly contradicts their dogma.

Even though I think being a materialist is a philosophical position with many problems, I do see your point about giraffe's having long necks could be evidence for non-intelligent design.

So many problems arise when attempting to understand quantum mechanics using classical concepts. It isn't consciousness that collapses wave functions, but interaction with any sufficiently complex system. Yes, quantum mechanics is a probabilistic, non-realist theory. So what? How does that deny materialism?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I think this argument fails for the same reason as the arguments that God is not benevolent because there are so many bad things in the world. An omnibenevolent God would WANT to create the best of all possible universes. An omniscient God would know HOW to create the best of all possible universes. And an omnipotent God would have the POWER to create the best of all possible universes. Therefore, if an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God exists, then we are forced to conclude that we live in the best of all possible universes.

I don't see that argument (theodisy) as a failed one. It's a potent argument against the existence of a tri-omni god.

It seems like your god belief compels you conclude that this is the best of all possible worlds. That's an awkward position to try to defend given how easy it has been for man to make it a better world for centuries. You pretty much have to say that it is presumptuous to think that those changes were for the better.

Anything that we think could be "better" is just a manifestation of our own profoundly limited (in time and space) perspective, as it would require something like omniscience on our own part to say definitively that the chain of events resulting from ANY change in the universe as it is would make the universe better overall.

You've made this claim before, also with no supporting argument. It's a belief you take by faith. You're essentially saying that this could be the best of all possible worlds even though we see all kinds of problems that have been fixed and some that likely can and will be fixed down the road. Well, it would have to be in the presence of a tri-omni god. Your thinking is to assume that such a god exists, and that therefore we live in such a best possible world. My thinking is to see that clearly we do not live in such a world, and therefore such a god is not involved in our lives.

As I alluded above, man has been making his world better for centuries.The world got better when small pox was eradicated, for example. It got better when we invented electric light. You're going to have a pretty tough time arguing otherwise.

We really don't know if the human body is as perfect as it can possibly be for this time and place or not, so assuming that it is not is an unwarranted assumption.

Yes, we do. We know that the human body could be better, and ought to be if there were a tri-omni god. No eyeglasses needed, for example.

The bottom line is that we just don't KNOW that things would be better if anything were different

We have good reason to believe that we can make the world better.

We can't know what "good" is without contrasting it to "evil."

Why would we need to know about good or evil if evil weren't an option?

Apologetics seems to be about explaining why a world that is indistinguishable from a godless one still might have a good, powerful god running it anyway, running it as if it were not there in a manner inscrutable to us. Sure, the universe looks flawed, says the apologist, but our minds are too puny to make such an assessment. One needs omniscience to make such judgments. Sure, guinea worm infections of the eye might look undesirable, but nobody can say that the world isn't a better place for them. Sure, there's evil, but that's actually good, because without it, you wouldn't know what good was.

if I pick up a gun and shoot the first child I see, the end result will not be a worse world than if I did not do that?

In my belief, that is so. It would take something like omniscience on our part to say definitively one way or another, though

So we shouldn't think about how to make our world better, or to even try, since we don't have omniscience to determine whether any given change would be for the better? Go ahead and shoot the kid, since we aren't omniscient and can't tell if that would make the world a better or worse place, right? And we need omniscience to know whether a mass shooting in a church or school every week is an element of the best of all possible worlds.

Secular humanism is a life-affirming and mankind-affirming worldview. It assumes that the world can be made better, and that only man can make it so. So far, we have a pretty good track record for that. Life has never been as good for as many.

The way our body works does not seem to me to be the best possible intelligent design

You might like the following. Good topic, by the way.

Spoiler

"In the human female, a fertilized egg can implant into the fallopian tube, cervix or ovary rather than the uterus causing an ectopic pregnancy. The existence of a cavity between the ovary and the fallopian tube could indicate a flawed design in the female reproductive system. Prior to modern surgery, ectopic pregnancy invariably caused the deaths of both mother and baby. Even in modern times, in almost all cases the pregnancy must be aborted to save the life of the mother.

"In the human female, the birth canal passes through the pelvis. The prenatal skull will deform to a surprising extent. However, if the baby's head is significantly larger than the pelvic opening, the baby cannot be born naturally. Prior to the development of modern surgery (caesarean section), such a complication would lead to the death of the mother, the baby, or both. Other birthing complications such as breech birth are worsened by this position of the birth canal.

"In the human male, testes develop initially within the abdomen. Later during gestation, they migrate through the abdominal wall into the scrotum. This causes two weak points in the abdominal wall where hernias can later form. Prior to modern surgical techniques, complications from hernias, such as intestinal blockage and gangrene, usually resulted in death.

"The existence of the pharynx, a passage used for both ingestion and respiration, with the consequent drastic increase in the risk of choking.

"The breathing reflex is stimulated not directly by the absence of oxygen but indirectly by the presence of carbon dioxide. A result is that, at high altitudes, oxygen deprivation can occur in unadapted individuals who do not consciously increase their breathing rate." source

 

[Ellen Brown]

My basic premise is our design doesn't appear to be intelligent as much as it could be. There are so many problems with the human body. The fact that disease exists at all is an indication of imperfections in the design. For example, take DNA and cancer. The DNA mechanism certainly could be more corrective to make cancer impossible. Another example, is limb regeneration or regeneration in general. We have to many organs and body parts that are not capable of regeneration. Yet cuts in skin can regenerate and heal.

I'm sure there are hundreds more I could cite. But my basic premise is a truly intelligent design, and assuming it was God doing the design, there is so much room for improvements it just doesn't seem an intelligent agent was consciously involved. You would think with God's infinite capacity for intelligence if God were the agent our bodies would be more tightly organized and self-correcting.

It seems to me evolution and adaptation is better explanation for what we experience in our lives. Say you have a million apes running around and one get's a gene upgrade or improvement. It takes hundreds of generations before the change migrates throughout the entire species if it migrates at all. There are so many differences and quirks in human genes it seems to me migratory adaptation is the only explanation to explain all the inconsistencies across the entire population.

It is frustratingly ludicrous to me that anyone of us would be arrogant enough to assume that we could prove or disprove a single thing about Evolution or Theology. What all this ruction proves to me is that Homo Sapiens is too terrified about awareness to think sanely about any part of it without using hysterical denial to mask their sheer terror. It's come to me that the only rational path is to enjoy what I can and to inflict no harm on any of creation.

 

[rrobs]

My basic premise is our design doesn't appear to be intelligent as much as it could be. There are so many problems with the human body. The fact that disease exists at all is an indication of imperfections in the design. For example, take DNA and cancer. The DNA mechanism certainly could be more corrective to make cancer impossible. Another example, is limb regeneration or regeneration in general. We have to many organs and body parts that are not capable of regeneration. Yet cuts in skin can regenerate and heal.

I'm sure there are hundreds more I could cite. But my basic premise is a truly intelligent design, and assuming it was God doing the design, there is so much room for improvements it just doesn't seem an intelligent agent was consciously involved. You would think with God's infinite capacity for intelligence if God were the agent our bodies would be more tightly organized and self-correcting.

It seems to me evolution and adaptation is better explanation for what we experience in our lives. Say you have a million apes running around and one get's a gene upgrade or improvement. It takes hundreds of generations before the change migrates throughout the entire species if it migrates at all. There are so many differences and quirks in human genes it seems to me migratory adaptation is the only explanation to explain all the inconsistencies across the entire population.

I assume this is a post to debunk God having created man. That's fine, but you should perhaps note a few details in the book of Genesis. I am not offering this as a "proof" of creation. I merely wish to give you the opportunity to see exactly what the book (scriptures) itself says on the matter. Belief, of course, is optional.

Gen 1:31 says that everything God made was "good." When we think of that word we tend to think of goodness in a moral sense, but that is not at all what the ancient Hebrew would have thought. It is the Hebrew word "tov" and a much better translation would have been "functional." Likewise when we read the word "evil" we think of a guy with horns, another moral value. The Hebrew word used for "evil" is "ra" and it is better translated as dysfunctional.

So when God first made people all was functional. Everything worked right. There would have been no disease or even death. All their food was provided by simple eating from the garden God made for them. Couldn't have gotten any better than that. God did everything just right.

All the shortcomings you mentioned happened later, namely after they disobeyed God and ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, at which time it says their eyes were opened and they knew good and evil (Gen 3:1-7). Apparently before they ate of the tree their eyes were closed and they did not know good and evil, functional and dysfunctional. Exactly what their prior reality was, is hard to imagine. I believe before they ate, their source of information came from something other than the 5 sense which is how we all relate to the world. The senses can be easily tricked into thinking the wrong thing, hence things became a little functional mixed with a healthy dose of dysfunctional. Before they ate, I believe they got all their information directly from God who was always functional, but that is another story.

In any case Gen 3:18-19 says that after they ate everything went haywire. That is when all the shortcomings you mentioned came to be.

God gave man free will. He did not create robots. He was totally transparent when He told them not to eat and what would happen if they did. He told them they would surely die (Gen 2:17), hardly functional. But, having free will, they believed the devil instead of God. Gen 3:4-5 is the lie he told them. As good as they had it, they wanted more, they wanted to be like God Himself. It backfired in a major way.

Bottom line, God did not create people with all the flaws you mentioned. He created them completely functional and they made themselves dysfunctional.

Anyway, there is a little info straight from the scriptures. Given the subject matter you posted, I think it is relevant to have some understanding of what they themselves say as opposed to tradition which is where most people's knowledge of the Bible comes from.

 

[QuestioningMind]

While I do believe that evolution is the mechanism of creation, I think this argument fails for the same reason as the arguments that God is not benevolent because there are so many bad things in the world.

An omnibenevolent God would WANT to create the best of all possible universes. An omniscient God would know HOW to create the best of all possible universes. And an omnipotent God would have the POWER to create the best of all possible universes. Therefore, if an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God exists, then we are forced to conclude that we live in the best of all possible universes.

Anything that we think could be "better" is just a manifestation of our own profoundly limited (in time and space) perspective, as it would require something like omniscience on our own part to say definitively that the chain of events resulting from ANY change in the universe as it is would make the universe better overall.

We really don't know if the human body is as perfect as it can possibly be for this time and place or not, so assuming that it is not is an unwarranted assumption.

"Therefore, if an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God exists, then we are forced to conclude that we live in the best of all possible universes."

That's an awfully big IF... especially when fallible human beings can think up numerous simple improvements on the design.

 

[exchemist]

So many problems arise when attempting to understand quantum mechanics using classical concepts. It isn't consciousness that collapses wave functions, but interaction with any sufficiently complex system. Yes, quantum mechanics is a probabilistic, non-realist theory. So what? How does that deny materialism?

YES!

There is this widespread misconception that QM somehow gives a special role to a conscious observer. It is true that people such as Wigner did seem to hold this view, back in the 1950s, but so far as I can tell this is quite outmoded nowadays. It has huge and obvious problems, such as what happens to the physics when the experimenter goes to get a cup of coffee - or when the experiment is observed by a cat..or a goldfish.

 

[Axe Elf]

It seems like your god belief compels you conclude that this is the best of all possible worlds.

That is exactly the case, and that is exactly how I have presented it:

IF an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God exists, then we are logically constrained to conclude that this is the best of all possible universes.

I choose to believe that the omni-God exists. Some choose to believe otherwise, and are therefore not logically constrained to conclude that we live in the best of all possible universes.

That's an awkward position to try to defend given how easy it has been for man to make it a better world for centuries. You pretty much have to say that it is presumptuous to think that those changes were for the better.

You only find it awkward because you don't consider things that exist in the best of all possible universes to be a part of the best of all possible universes, for some reason--smallpox vaccines and electric lights, for instance. Those things are still a part of this, the best of all possible universes. Whatever has occurred and whatever has yet to occur in the universe is all a part of the same creation. Only those things which are not a part of the universe that exists can be proposed as possible improvements to it--and without omniscience to evaluate every possible effect and ramification of those proposals, we cannot say for sure if they are improvements or not.

You've made this claim before

Yes, I kind of remember correcting you on it before. I guess it didn't sink in then, either.

It's a belief you take by faith.

Yes, all beliefs are taken on faith. The only indisputable fact we have is that we exist; all other facts are based in faith. I choose to believe that the omni-God exists. Others may choose to believe otherwise.

You're essentially saying that this could be the best of all possible worlds even though we see all kinds of problems that have been fixed and some that likely can and will be fixed down the road.

I'm saying that this "could be" the best of all possible universes only in the sense that it "could be" that the omni-God exists. I'm saying that IF the omni-God exists, then there is no doubt--we are logically constrained to conclude that this IS the best of all possible universes.

"Fixes" that exist in the universe now or which will exist in the future are still a part of this, the best of all possible universes. They are not external additions to the universe, they have always been a part of the universes. They do not change anything about the original creation; they are only part of the process of unfolding that which was created in the first place.

Your thinking is to assume that such a god exists, and that therefore we live in such a best possible world.

Now you've got it.

My thinking is to see that clearly we do not live in such a world, and therefore such a god is not involved in our lives.

Logically, that position is equally valid. As we've already established, beliefs are taken on faith. I believe the omni-God exists; you have faith that He does not. I cannot prove that the omni-God exists by this argument; I can merely assert that one is logically constrained to believe that we live in the best of all possible universes if one believes that the omni-God exists. You cannot prove that the omni-God does not exist by your position, since you cannot establish that we don't live in the best of all possible universes; you can merely assert that one is logically constrained to believe that the omni-God does not exist if we do not live in the best of all possible universes.

As I alluded above, man has been making his world better for centuries.The world got better when small pox was eradicated, for example. It got better when we invented electric light. You're going to have a pretty tough time arguing otherwise.

Let's say you're watching a movie that's full of all kinds of tension and angst and it makes you feel sad and angry and uncomfortable for the first part of it, but then in the second part, things all work themselves out and everyone lives happily ever after and you walk out of the theater feeling inspired and refreshed.

Did the movie "get better" halfway through, or is the movie the same movie when you went into the theater that it is when you came out of the theater?

Obviously, it is still the same single movie that was conceived, shot and released by the studio--the movie did not change.

The same single universe--the one that exists--is still the same universe as the one that was conceived and created at the dawn of time. Space and time are merely different aspects of the same thing; all of time was created with all of space, every moment just as structured as every millimeter. The best of all possible universes contains times and places where smallpox is a threat and where electricity has not yet been harnessed for human applications, as well as times and places where smallpox has been eradicated and electricity does all kinds of wonderful things for humans--but this is all part of the one universe that we have, the universe that exists, the best of all possible universes. It is not a "new, improved universe" once humans have evolved or smallpox has been eradicated or electricity has been harnessed--it is still the same, single eternal universe.

Yes, we do. We know that the human body could be better, and ought to be if there were a tri-omni god. No eyeglasses needed, for example.

Eyeglasses did not exist for a long time. At the present time they do exist. There may come a time when they do not exist again, due to advances in optical surgery. Whatever happens is all a part of this one single universe--the one that I call the best of all possible universes, the one that you believe could be better.

We have good reason to believe that we can make the world better.

I think we have better reason to question whether or not we can judge any imagined "improvements" exhaustively from our own virtually infinitesimal perspective in time and space.

Why would we need to know about good or evil if evil weren't an option?

Like I said, to me, it feels like having an understanding and appreciation of goodness--even if it means having contrasting experiences with evil--is better than having no understanding or appreciation of goodness at all. Again, your opinion may vary.

Apologetics seems to be about explaining why a world that is indistinguishable from a godless one still might have a good, powerful god running it anyway, running it as if it were not there in a manner inscrutable to us. Sure, the universe looks flawed, says the apologist, but our minds are too puny to make such an assessment. One needs omniscience to make such judgments. Sure, guinea worm infections of the eye might look undesirable, but nobody can say that the world isn't a better place for them. Sure, there's evil, but that's actually good, because without it, you wouldn't know what good was.

I would say that's a fair assessment (in general; minor quibble to come). Xian apologists basically keep those who want to say that God is logically impossible in check--by showing how God IS logically possible. Apologists who go beyond that, to try to prove that God exists, for instance, have taken a wrong turn. It should be about reclaiming reason to work alongside faith from those who would claim that reason is opposed to faith. It should be about keeping rational beliefs open to faith, and nothing more.

My minor quibble is that I don't think the universe looks flawed (from my almost infinitesimally limited perspective)--I think it looks like the best of all possible universes. Maybe it's because my mind isn't as puny as most.

So we shouldn't think about how to make our world better, or to even try, since we don't have omniscience to determine whether any given change would be for the better?

Any "change" that is effected isn't really an improvement, because that "change" has always existed at that time and place from the foundation of the world. It was destined from the moment of creation to be a part of this, the best of all possible universes.

Go ahead and shoot the kid, since we aren't omniscient and can't tell if that would make the world a better or worse place, right? And we need omniscience to know whether a mass shooting in a church or school every week is an element of the best of all possible worlds.

Now you're getting it. Maybe that kid was gonna grow up to be worse than Hitler--or maybe he would have grown up to bring about world peace--but we can't say definitively one way or another. The world may be better off without him or it may have been better off with him--but it takes a lot of arrogance to try to insist that one is true over the other. Since I can't say with certainty, I'll trust the One I believe to have created it all in the first place, with the benefits of omniscience and omnibenevolence. Of course you are free to believe otherwise.

Secular humanism is a life-affirming and mankind-affirming worldview. It assumes that the world can be made better, and that only man can make it so. So far, we have a pretty good track record for that. Life has never been as good for as many.

Xianity says that God is in control of everything, and man cannot do anything to change what God has created (being himself merely a part of that creation). So far, He has a pretty good track record. Life has never been as good for as many.

 

[Axe Elf]

"Therefore, if an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God exists, then we are forced to conclude that we live in the best of all possible universes."

That's an awfully big IF... especially when fallible human beings can think up numerous simple improvements on the design.

Can they? See my lengthy response to @It Aint Necessarily So above.

 

[rrobs]

"Therefore, if an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God exists, then we are forced to conclude that we live in the best of all possible universes."

That's an awfully big IF... especially when fallible human beings can think up numerous simple improvements on the design.

Check your premise. You may be interested in reading my reply to the original post. It is #24, right before your reply.

 

[ecco]

God made Adam perfect but he sinned. So his descendants are not perfect. Death has a grip on everyone now. Along with his buddy decay.

• Your Eternal God did nothing for 99.999999999-99999% of His existence.
• Your Omnipotent God designed Adam in such a way that he would sin.
• Your Omniscient God knew beforehand that Adam would sin.

 

[ecco]

All the shortcomings you mentioned happened later, namely after they disobeyed God and ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, at which time it says their eyes were opened and they knew good and evil

I'll repeat...

• Your Eternal God did nothing for 99.999999999-99999% of His existence.
• Your Omnipotent God designed Adam in such a way that he would sin.
• Your Omniscient God knew beforehand that Adam would sin.

 

[QuestioningMind]

Can they? See my lengthy response to @It Aint Necessarily So above.

Certainly they can... IF you are going to propose that there's an all knowing all powerful being capable of creating a perfect human being. The question is WHY would you choose to accept this massive IF as being reality? As soon as you do so you automatically exclude the possibility that there is any flaw in human design, no matter how illogical that design might might be.

Let's take the human immune system for instance. It's function it to protect the body against possible biological pathogens. Now if I were an intelligent designer and I also designed every single biological pathogen a human body might possibly come in contact with, I would design humans to be born with immunity to all of these possible pathogens. But this isn't the case. Humans develop immunities to those pathogens that they are exposed to, almost as if there was no way to know in advance what possible pathogens a human body might come in contact with.

 

[Axe Elf]

Certainly they can...

Either you failed to read my lengthy response to It Aint Necessarily So above, or you failed to comprehend it.

The question is WHY would you choose to accept this massive IF as being reality?

Because I prefer to live in the best of all possible universes, created by an omni-God, of course.

As soon as you do so you automatically exclude the possibility that there is any flaw in human design, no matter how illogical that design might might be.

I'm ok with that. I certainly see no logical reason to believe that there is any flaw in human design.

Let's take the human immune system for instance. It's function it to protect the body against possible biological pathogens. Now if I were an intelligent designer and I also designed every single biological pathogen a human body might possibly come in contact with, I would design humans to be born with immunity to all of these possible pathogens.

Why in the world would you do that? That would pretty much negate the reason for biological pathogens to exist in the first place--at least, we wouldn't be able to call them that any more.

 

[rrobs]

I'll repeat...

• Your Eternal God did nothing for 99.999999999-99999% of His existence.
• Your Omnipotent God designed Adam in such a way that he would sin.
• Your Omniscient God knew beforehand that Adam would sin.

Where did you get those ideas? Tradition or the actual scriptures? If tradition, forget it, if the scriptures perhaps you could cite chapter and verse.

If you want, I can save you time by just telling you that while they may indeed be tradition, there is nowhere in the actual scriptures to support them in any way, shape, or form.

 

[QuestioningMind]

Check your premise. You may be interested in reading my reply to the original post. It is #24, right before your reply.

"Bottom line, God did not create people with all the flaws you mentioned. He created them completely functional and they made themselves dysfunctional."

Sorry, but I've always found this argument to be rather ridiculous. The obvious flaw that the God of genesis made is his original creations was that He created them naive and gullible enough to be deceived by the lying and deception serpent He created and allowed into the the garden. It's almost as if they were designed to fail and if that's so then any flaws they may have acquired afterwards can be attributed to that original design specification.

 

[rrobs]

"Bottom line, God did not create people with all the flaws you mentioned. He created them completely functional and they made themselves dysfunctional."

Sorry, but I've always found this argument to be rather ridiculous. The obvious flaw that the God of genesis made is his original creations was that He created them naive and gullible enough to be deceived by the lying and deception serpent He created and allowed into the the garden. It's almost as if they were designed to fail and if that's so then any flaws they may have acquired afterwards can be attributed to that original design specification.

Like I said, belief in the scriptures are optional. Lot's of people consider them ridiculous.

 

[QuestioningMind]

Either you failed to read my lengthy response to It Aint Necessarily So above, or you failed to comprehend it.



Because I prefer to live in the best of all possible universes, created by an omni-God, of course.

That explains a lot. You don't care about verifiable reality and prefer to accept a comforting fantasy 'possibility' instead. You're not alone

I'm ok with that. I certainly see no logical reason to believe that there is any flaw in human design.

Of course you're okay with that, because before you even explored the possibility of there being any flaw in human design, you've chosen to blindly accept that it's not possible for humans to have any flaws in their design.

Why in the world would you do that? That would pretty much negate the reason for biological pathogens to exist in the first place--at least, we wouldn't be able to call them that any more.

Because the entire concept that you're proposing is that God created humans perfectly. IF that were the case, you're right, humans wouldn't BE subjected to any biological pathogens. A perfectly designed system would originate with an immunity system capable of defending against any biological intrusion that's ever been or ever will be created. However, a system that has no idea what biological intrusions might exist would have to be able to develop immunity to biological intrusions as they were encountered.

 

[QuestioningMind]

Like I said, belief in the scriptures are optional.

Well, I certainly hope that you didn't conclude that I don't like you, just because I don't find your arguments to be logical.

I've read the bible (at least two versions of it) and that's where I get my ideas about what it says. It's a story about a couple who were completely oblivious to the concepts of lying and deception (thus very naive and gullible) who were left in a garden with a lying and deceptive snake and who, as anyone might easily guess, were lied to and deceived. Anyone who set up such a situation and didn't realize that it would conclude in such a manner would have to be very naive and gullible as well. So perhaps it's true... maybe we were made is God's image.

 

[rrobs]

Well, I certainly hope that you didn't conclude that I don't like you, just because I don't find your arguments to be logical.

I've read the bible (at least two versions of it) and that's where I get my ideas about what it says. It's a story about a couple who were completely oblivious to the concepts of lying and deception (thus very naive and gullible) who were left in a garden with a lying and deceptive snake and who, as anyone might easily guess, were lied to and deceived. Anyone who set up such a situation and didn't realize that it would conclude in such a manner would have to be very naive and gullible as well. So perhaps it's true... maybe we were made is God's image.

I didn't think you didn't like me. You seem to be a bit more discerning than that. I tend to be a bit colorful in my posts. Thanks for understanding.

Wouldn't spelling out to them exactly what would happen if they disobeyed have some bearing on the matter? I wouldn't say God left them oblivious to anything. They were fully informed.

As regard to the snake I offer the following. All languages use figures of speeches to emphasize. It is usually understood that when something is not true to fact it is probably a figure of speech, We have a figure that calls sly people who cause trouble "a snake in the grass." When we hear that we understand that the person is not literally a snake.

In other places the devil is said to appear as an angel of light. Snakes don't actually talk, so Eve was not actually having a conversation with a snake. More like a sharp "snake oil" salesman. There is yet another figure of speech involving snakes. Nobody actually sells snake oil. We understand it means they were actually selling a some bogus product or another. Just apply that to Genesis and you have a truer picture of the temptation. In any case, as I said, God was forthright in His warning not to fall for lies.

You mentioned they were created in God's image. The Gospel of John says God is spirit. So Adam and Eve were originally created with spirit. If you follow the first 3 chapters of Genesis carefully you will learn that man was composed of body, soul, and spirit. The spirit is what gave them direct access to God. When they sinned they lost the spirit and became body and soul only. The body is dust and the soul is breath life, so spirit is not needed to live as a human. It does cause many problems to not have spirit, eventual death being the chief consequence. The new birth (getting saved) is getting that spirit back. If you are interested I can give you scriptures that clearly show what I've just said. It is seldom, if ever, taught by the churches, but it is really in the scriptures.

In general reading something is not at all like studying it. Simply reading a chapter in a history book would probably result in a much lower test score than having spent time in actually studying the chapter. I can appreciate your having read two versions, but I'm not sure how much you really got out of that reading.

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

While I do believe that evolution is the mechanism of creation, I think this argument fails for the same reason as the arguments that God is not benevolent because there are so many bad things in the world.

An omnibenevolent God would WANT to create the best of all possible universes. An omniscient God would know HOW to create the best of all possible universes. And an omnipotent God would have the POWER to create the best of all possible universes. Therefore, if an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God exists, then we are forced to conclude that we live in the best of all possible universes.

Anything that we think could be "better" is just a manifestation of our own profoundly limited (in time and space) perspective, as it would require something like omniscience on our own part to say definitively that the chain of events resulting from ANY change in the universe as it is would make the universe better overall.

We really don't know if the human body is as perfect as it can possibly be for this time and place or not, so assuming that it is not is an unwarranted assumption.

So. The limit appears to be in the creative ability of this god of yours.

Sad, really: A high school level engineering student can easily point out how to improve the human "design".

Making the creative ability of any god(s) involved, very questionable at best.