That's because it's really just the same comment as Sagan's "it's a lot of wasted space". I can't emphasize this enough: it's the end product that counts. To achieve an end product through evolutionary and astrobiological processes, i.e. man, you have to go through substantial byproducts. And, as a Christian, I'm completely missing your point on mass extinctions. All beings die and species as well. I just don't see the big deal here. The real question is this: what being besides man has a spirit that lives through near death experiences, out of body experiences and the like? None. It's not the death of the body that is interesting but the fact that a spiritual body lives in spite of it...
Hair in general is the product, in my mind, of an incredible genius that terraformed the earth through a seed and watched it progress from a singularity to a self-aware, spiritual supercomputer. The hair, the eye, the mitochondria - it is all wonderful and miraculous. Remember I believe in random processes being channeled through inevitable design spaces. A certain amount of randomness, including pubic hair and armpit hair, is allowed without detracting from the genius of the original design.
You keep evading the question. Did your genius create man and all other "byproducts?" Why did he/she create those "byproducts" if the intension was to let them go extinct? Isn't that a sign of a lazy, incompetent, and irresponsible designer?
Are you saying that pubic hair and and armpit hair are results of "certain amount of randomness" rather than design? What about blue eyes? Are those results of randomness or design? Where do you draw the line?
I choose number 2. Number 1 works too, if the term "Satan" is understood as the artificial intelligence that manufactures this world...from before the big bang(s) and onward. Everything in the world is symbolic. Evolution is symbolic of change, learning, adjustments, adaptation, ingenuity, survival. These all speak of the maker of this world. For example, the building of this world is not something God teaches. Made out of unreality, it is a learning process all the way. Adaptations and adjustments are made as it is made up. And this is so the maker can survive. The maker of this world "lives" only in time, another of it's many ingenious, but artificial products. Anything that seems to make time important, linear, real, necessary or part of the process serves the maker's means. It's means is deception. It's goal is madness. God's creations are created perfect, complete, unchanging and eternal. The Son of God does not "learn"...he knows all. But this world is constructed in a limited knowledge environment in which nothing is known for sure. I call that "perception". Jesus
The heavens and the earth [physical universe] do not declare the glory of God. It is anti-Christ, for all it shows it death and destruction, deception and disease. I could go on, but you get the point. Ingeniousness does not equate to glory. It does speak of the power of the mind. If you can respect this power, you can figure some things out. Jesus
kjkent1 wrote: Evolutionary biologist Denis Lamoureux says: Knowing that organisms evolve is not a positive reason for excluding design from each and every biotic feature. Evolution and design can co-exist. Things can be designed to evolve. Evolution can be designed. Evolution can be used by design.
The "line" doesn't really matter does it? I'm just saying that the parameters of the universe were set up for rocky planets and self-organization, the origin of life inexplicably occurred through seeming impossibility and then you have life self-organizing at a mind-numbing pace all the while the earth is terraforming itself. More remarkably, you have the earth once man is formed/created experiencing almost endless supernatural occurrences throughout history. If you put it all together, it just doesn't fit into Ayn Rand Playbook...
So instead of being a "designer," your creator is a tinker? Is he/she tinkering with the lightening? With the floods? With the diseases?
A diety that micromanages is a deity that demonstrates inherent imperfection because it didn't anticipate all things before it created the very first thing.