How can athiests look at the beauty of the earth, or the human body, and not believe in God?

Question

It was Charles Darwin that said, "To suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection, seems I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree."

(Did you know that the eye has 40,00,000 nerve endings, the focusing muscles move an estimated 100,000 times a day, and the retina contains 137,000,000 light sensitive cells?)

Also, George Gallup, the famous statistician, said, "I could prove God statistically; take the human body alone; the chance that all the functions of the individual would just happen, is a statistical monstrosity."

Albert Einstein: "Everyone who is seriously interested in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe -- a spirit vastly superior to man, and one in the face of which our modest powers must feel humble."

My God Reigns!

Answer 1

I have often wondered this myself! Just look at a newborn baby and tell me it got here all by itself. Absolutely not!

Answer 2

That's actually an interesting question. I haven't heart that one before. I think the fact that the brain is capable of adapting like that shows the complexity of God's creation. Think about it, if you made a computer but never gave it an operating system, would it work all? Would it be able to adapt to the circumstances and continue functioning? The human body is essentially a machine, a very very well designed machine. That being said, when mankind fell from grace in the garden of Eden, the perfect design of the machine became flawed. Things stopped working how they were supposed to. It's still a masterpiece, considering everything that has to go right in the human body on any given day for it to work properly. But the fact remains that just as the flaw of sin entered into our consciousness, flaws appeared in the human body. This is why despite God's intentions for Mankind, things like you mentioned can and do happen. If God already built into use to accept Him, then we wouldn't have free will. So He didn't build it into us.

Answer 3

How can You look at the earth,universe, humans and beleive that one enity invented it all for his own uses.
Darwin never said he was an atheist. He lived in a time when to do so was certain death, and he suffered for his accomplishments.
What you are saying about Darwins comment on the naked eye you are taking out of context and slightly bending the truth of his statement as Christians are known to do.
Darwins agreed (or confessed) that to the untrained individual "To suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection, seems I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree."
He Darwin actually saw this as proff of evolution.
George Gallup, the famous statistician was first and foremost a commercial adventist. Who came upon the idea of acculatinn of information about people, and events by just asking them a as to sell this information to Governments, and companies, and politicians. He was not a math tatistician of scientific standing in regard to people like Einstein or even Junior Scientists. His business sense had no bearing on evolutin or God. He wa ssimply stating his Christian beleifs as you are wiith no more proof of god than you have.

The spirit is manifest in the pursuit of science , and in the laws of the universe. It's on eof coroporatiive forces which make it al work. We don't know why yet and may never know, but the idea that one enity(remember it's a male enity , as in the form of man)
seems I too freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.
If you have proof of God where is it? why is God hiding? What's the point? Why can he only speak to old uneducated starved to death men out in the middle of the desert?

Answer 4

Funny, I ask the same thing but wonder how anyone can look at all that and not believe in evolution. As for the Darwin quote, read on to see his next sentence or two. But of course you can't do that, because you don't have any of his books; rather you took this line out of context from some creationist website. I would not take biological or religious advice from a statistician either. Presumably you would because it supports your pre-formed and closed-minded views. And Einstein's words do not really support your particular idea of a god; just an admission that we don't know everything, and perhaps cannot. And that includes you too.

I have to add this; You point out three large numbers in your treatise on the eye. So what? Is your argument simply that if something has lots of pieces (lots in terms of the kind of numbers that evolution has found it useful for us to comprehend), therefore it must be supernatural? That is known as the argument from personal incredulity (I don't understand it so it must be wrong) and is very weak. All this stuff is easily understandable if you wish to research it. You prefer to remain in ignorance, that is all.

Answer 5

I'd imagine most people with a higher IQ, would discount the likelyhood of a higher power. The evidence, surely shows this to be true. It's my feeling, that religion is mearly a form of wanting to feel apart of something. I'm certain most people who are religious go to a church of one kind or another, the reason being is to be apart of a group of like minded people who they can feel close to and relate. Some resort to the power of prayer to have "good" things happen, where it's not the prayer that provided you with what you asked for, but a desire for these things to happen. I feel the bible is the largest produced book of fiction ever. I'm not an athiest by the way but rather an agnostic. Everything has a reason, and a clear evolutionary path which can be followed, if you open your mind and allow yourself to see it. Now, being my views are what they are, I don't bash people who choose to follow a religious path, as it makes them happy, and if it comforts them to believe something, who am I to say it's right or wrong; just as people who feel that way shouldn't chastise me for my thoughts. I feel a lot of people use the "power of God" more as a crutch than anything. It's easier to explain it away as it wasn't God's will, more than I didn't do enough to make it happen.

Answer 6

Darwin was wrong about the eye. As it turns out, eyes have evolved independently in several different species, and there are numerous species with what we would consider "partial eyes" even today. We can see the evolution of the eye across these species.

Gallup clearly was clueless about evolution at the time he said that.

Einstein's god was the god of Spinoza - i.e., Deism.

The way to look at beauty and not believe in god, is to simply realize that beauty is our own assessment of that which is conducive to replication. Why would a god outfit us with an appreciation for the world he plans to destroy?

Answer 7

Perhaps you hit the nail on the head. I think people that are not inspired by God are just not looking at the beauty of things. They concentrate on negative things. You say beautiful world, they say rape and murder with a question mark as if there is no beautiful world. You say human body, they say disease and miscarriage. I don't think that it is cool however to hold what you know or see over others. It is certainly not biblical in anyway to try to force your beliefs on others or to think of yourself as superior in anyway, because you are not. Jesus never said to get in peoples faces and tell them the good news. He said to tell people and if they don't accept it(receive you) than go on to others who do. Mother Teresa also explained that Christians should not try to force their beliefs on others, that God is behind all things and that there are many paths to God. Something not commonly taught by many churches, because they just want more members and more money( another thing that Jesus warned about!). I'm assuming that you are Christian because of the Darwin and Gallup quotes as they were both brought up in Christian societies and I know Darwin was a Christian. Einstein was Jewish however. That Darwin quote reminds me and looks as though it was perhaps influenced by a previous quote about grand design by Sir Isaac Newton who posed the question 'Could the ear come to be, without the knowledge of sound?' The answer to this question is obvious and in it's own way proves the exsistance of intelligent design behind our world.

Answer 8

...it is simply called biology..yes there is alot we dont know...but we learn more and more....just becuaxe some scientist and what not say these things i mean so waht! scientist back in the day said the earht was flat and that the earth was the center od the universe....tell you what....you go to a war and watch good men burn alive and lose limbs and blow up in pieces and then tell me you are so sure about the beauty of it all...there is ugly as well....i am not saying there in NOT a god..but i am saying but be so damn sure either....besides...if there is one..maybe he is not the version of what every religion you think it is....again...just becuase you were bron and raised inot a religion does not make it the one...even if you were not and just picked one..that is still becuase some one created it and made it and you adopted it.....i dont want to babble..but just becuase you think it is real does not mean it is...always keep your mind open to every alturnitve...

and that l;ast quote..my god reigns ...eewwww...that sounds like crazy people talk

Answer 9

first off, to say that god must exist or else how would we be here is ridiculous:

if we didnt evolve exactly how we did and chance didnt make the universe exactly as it did, we would not be in this situation nor be able to ask these questions...this is called the anthropic principle (spelling?)...read steven hawkings "a brief history of the time" for more info.

and read this...it explains "why im not a christian" as its title says...http://users.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html

have fun, and hopefull one day you will come around to realism...set aside the fear of being alone w/o your saftey net and god seems a lot less necessary


one more thing...as someone else said...neither of those men were christian, and when einstein allowed god into his theories (namely general relativity), he called it the "greatest mistake of my life"

:) Long live FSM.

Answer 10

"How can athiests look at the beauty of the earth, or the human body, and not believe in God?"

I have no idea. The complexity of a blade of grass should be enough to convince anyone that God created it all.

Answer 11

I don't know why you quoted anything that Charles Darwin or Albert Einstein said, they were both atheists, usually when they said crap like that it is just because they were messing with people